Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

Somfin posted:

Actually a quick post that helps folks separate consumerism from capitalism would be pretty handy, since a lot of folks get fed a line of bullshit about how socialism means the end of products and markets.

I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but a trope that gets thrown around a lot in bad faith "debunks" of socialism is that the government will take away your toothbrush, or that you have to share it with your neighbour. There is a distinction between private and personal property. If I own a tooth brush, or a book, or even a computer (maybe?), that is fine in socialism or communism, since it's my personal property that doesn't take away anything from anyone, nor can I use a tooth brush to oppress workers to my will. Private property would be me owning a steel mill, a uranium mine, or a cattle ranch, and employing people to utilize this property to generate wealth for me. Consumerism is a sickness inflicted on people by capitalism, in that they have a manufactured desire to own the latest smart phone, and the "watch" that goes along with it, and so forth. And these wadgets are also used as a social signifier of one's "worth" in a consumerist society, so it's understandable that the brunch crowd get upset when it's hinted that actually you are not the car you own or the watch you wear.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

I've always found the private/personal property distinction to be needlessly confusing, especially since it was coined in the 1800s as a way to describe what for many was the new mode of ownership (capitalism) which was replacing most of the older forms. Factory ownership was called private ownership because unlike clerical estates or aristocratic titles in theory any private citizen could own it hence private. This is also why private schools in the UK are called public schools because they're open to the public provided they can afford the fees.

But now, even in countries with nobilities and the church as a landowner, the capitalist form is the one most of us are all familiar with so it doesn't really serve much of a purpose for distinction. It's also created another problem in that by associating capitalism with private ownership it means we have a lot of left wing thought and ideas that just replace the individual owners and then carry on in the exact same fashion and with the same profit motive and relationship to the labour force. I think we'd be better off calling it capitalist property and personal property for things you can own that don't give you control or leverage over others.

Acerbatus
Jun 26, 2020

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto and immediately died, and Marxist thought has not developed at all since them because its adherents are too busy turning off their brain and cheering for mass murder.

I mean, there are people in this very thread who are arguing that Mao and Stalin were swell guys and great leaders who were undermined by the cowardly west.

The Oldest Man posted:

Or the rate of profit increasing, that would also falsify one of the core pillars of Marxist economics.

Ed: I know that guy is on probation, but can you seriously look at places like Vietnam and Cuba before their revolutions, after their revolutions, today, and compare them with similar colonial states that did not go Full Marxism and say they made the wrong choice? I wouldn't define myself as a Marxist-Leninist, but if you look at Vietnam and go "hm yes, this is a failed ideology that never works" I don't know what to tell you.

The fundamental problem I see with communism is that after the revolution the people on top have very little incentitive to live up to what they were preaching; New boss same as the old boss, etc.

Obviously capitalism has that problem too. I really have no idea what the solution is.

Acerbatus fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Nov 11, 2020

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Acerbatus posted:

I mean, there are people in this very thread who are arguing that Mao and Stalin were swell guys and great leaders who were undermined by the cowardly west.

If you want to make a claim like this, you're going to have to be more specific.

1. Nobody is arguing that Stalin was a "swell guy". Not in this thread, anyway.

2. What is your specific grievance with Mao?

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Acerbatus posted:



The fundamental problem I see with communism is that after the revolution the people on top have very little incentitive to live up to what they were preaching; New boss same as the old boss, etc.

Obviously capitalism has that problem too. I really have no idea what the solution is.

Well that sounds a lot like the anarchist criticism of both capitalism and state roads to socialism. You might want to look at the anarchist movement for alternatives. I can give some recommendations if you'd like.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Or even just... an old marxist position, the whole stuff about having a revolution to install your own government with general secretaries and five year plans post-dates him. His views as far as I know were quite centered in democratizing things from the bottom up, pushing out the old hierarchies by the creation of new organizations centered in direct worker power. What can the government do if everyone is unionised and they decide not to cooperate? That's broadly the idea of syndicalists/industrial unionists etc. Who funnily enough had a bit of an issue in the early 20th century with more top-down schools of thought, especially in the wake of the apparent success of the russian revolution.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Nov 12, 2020

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Acerbatus posted:

I mean, there are people in this very thread who are arguing that Mao and Stalin were swell guys and great leaders who were undermined by the cowardly west.

Aren't you the guy who claimed the Dust Bowl was a natural disaster while putting the blame for famines in notably famine-prone pre-industrial China and Russia solely at the feet of the commies and then turned into a cloud of smoke when called on it

Falstaff
Apr 27, 2008

I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

Yeah Marx was not a statist, and especially after the Paris Commune failed he became very convinced that you can't just put proles in charge of capitalist levers of power (governmental and economic), you need to build new systems that better fit the new socialist society's goals. He even wrote a new preface to the Manifesto about it after the commune was crushed by bougie reactionary forces.

Marx posted:

No special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section 2. In view of the practical experience gained first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated.

One thing especially was proved by the Commune, vis., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

If the bolsheviks had ate poo poo in the revolution I really would have liked to see how leftism might have progressed in the absence of that ideological weight on the scales. A lot of people were understandably very keen on that method once it seemed like it was getting somewhere though now we know it has a lot of problems. Unfortunatley it defined what leftism was for a long time because obviously you want to pin your ideas to the other world superpower rather than going out on your own.

I think that's broadly the basis of the game Kaiserreich which in addition to some first world war counterfactuals, also does not have the victory for the bolsheviks and posits that instead the dominant leftist thought for much of the 20th century would be syndicalism.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

OwlFancier posted:

Or even just... an old marxist position, the whole stuff about having a revolution to install your own government with general secretaries and five year plans post-dates him. His views as far as I know were quite centered in democratizing things from the bottom up, pushing out the old hierarchies by the creation of new organizations centered in direct worker power. What can the government do if everyone is unionised and they decide not to cooperate? That's broadly the idea of syndicalists/industrial unionists etc.

Um, not in Marx no, aside from civil war in france which was written after the Paris Commune, Marx was a life long believer in the road to socialism lying with the conquest of the state. Besides the manifesto of the Communist League Marx spent his life supporting bourgeois revolutions in France and Germany and participation in elections in the more democratic states that existed in his day. He was a supporter of the early German social democratic movement, argued the First International should prioritise political action (this was the row which destroyed it) and spent much of his time actively criticising Proudhon and Bakunin and others for their "economism" and faith in direct worker power.

Marxism had very little influence in syndicalism, which was built out of the old Proudhonist labour movements in France and Spain, the two main Marxist syndicalists Deleon and Sorel (well before his turn) were minor figures with very little influence and were quickly sidelined once syndicalism grew in power.

Acerbatus
Jun 26, 2020

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

The Oldest Man posted:

Aren't you the guy who claimed the Dust Bowl was a natural disaster while putting the blame for famines in notably famine-prone pre-industrial China and Russia solely at the feet of the commies and then turned into a cloud of smoke when called on it

No, I'm the guy who claimed the Dust Bowl was a natural disaster while putting the blame for famines in notably famine-prone pre-industrial China and Russia solely at the feet of the commies, then admitted I was wrong about the dust bowl and provided examples about how the Chinese famine was primarily the CPC's fault when called on it.

Acerbatus fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Nov 12, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Sorry yes I should have separated those two a bit. Syndicalists as far as I know are not generally strict marxists, what I was meaning is that I think marx's critique lends itself very well to bottom up organizing. I don't honestly really get why so many people seem to apply it to some sort of state-capture-as-the-starting-point idea because I don't honestly see how it's supposed to work that well. Much prefer the idea of attacking the problems at ground level and at the level that people intrinsically understand.

Acerbatus
Jun 26, 2020

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Cpt_Obvious posted:

If you want to make a claim like this, you're going to have to be more specific.

1. Nobody is arguing that Stalin was a "swell guy". Not in this thread, anyway.

2. What is your specific grievance with Mao?

1. I was half-wrong on this one, it was somebody's avatar as opposed to a specific post that mentioned how it's an honor to be called a Stalinist.

2. Killing tens of millions of people via starvation or being sent to labour camps to work them to death.



Baka-nin posted:

Well that sounds a lot like the anarchist criticism of both capitalism and state roads to socialism. You might want to look at the anarchist movement for alternatives. I can give some recommendations if you'd like.

Was this the thread where the state monopoly of violence discussion came up? With the idea that the problem is that negotiation can be rejected with violence, but violence can't really be rejected with negotiation.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Acerbatus posted:

No, I'm the guy who claimed the Dust Bowl was a natural disaster while putting the blame for famines in notably famine-prone pre-industrial China and Russia solely at the feet of the commies, then admitted I was wrong about the dust bowl and provided examples about how the Chinese famine was primarily the CPC's fault when called on it.

Acerbatus posted:

2. Killing tens of millions of people via starvation

:thunk:

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






The regression of China, Russia and Vietnam to capitalism are all examples of why I don’t think we should all go out and join a vanguard party with a view to overthrowing the decadent bourgeois state.

Post-colonial Asia gives us a lot of evidence that there are no easy answers I think: Malaysia, Taiwan, S Korea and Singapore (although that’s a special case) all stayed capitalist and managed to achieve a higher standard of living than Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos until those countries began experimenting with opening up their economies to capital again, and the large number of N Korean escapees that fled periodic famines to settle in China suggest that things aren’t great under Juche either. But that was partly achieved by having state run social programs to guard against the threat of communist revolution, which might not have been implemented if that threat had not been credible.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Acerbatus posted:



Was this the thread where the state monopoly of violence discussion came up? With the idea that the problem is that negotiation can be rejected with violence, but violence can't really be rejected with negotiation.

No idea, some conversation in this thread past me by. That being said that isn't the definition of a state as far as anarchists are concerned, that's the one used and popularised by Max Weber. I've seen some anarchists use it but that's because its pretty concise compared to most political theory and its part of the rejection of all monopolies of power.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Beefeater1980 posted:

The regression of China, Russia and Vietnam to capitalism are all examples of why I don’t think we should all go out and join a vanguard party with a view to overthrowing the decadent bourgeois state.

Post-colonial Asia gives us a lot of evidence that there are no easy answers I think: Malaysia, Taiwan, S Korea and Singapore (although that’s a special case) all stayed capitalist and managed to achieve a higher standard of living than Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos until those countries began experimenting with opening up their economies to capital again, and the large number of N Korean escapees that fled periodic famines to settle in China suggest that things aren’t great under Juche either. But that was partly achieved by having state run social programs to guard against the threat of communist revolution, which might not have been implemented if that threat had not been credible.
I think the better way to frame things might be as a process as opposed to all at once. The American War of Independence didn't instantly spawn a new age of capitalism, it took a long, long time for global capitalism to take hold.

A more pointed question for the thread: can a central planning economy be accomplished without the state?

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The state or a state?

Also what kind of central planning, I guess? Can you have a central "economic planning office" that plays the country like railroad tycoon without the state? Probably not, that's a hierarchical way of looking at the world and requires an enforcement structure to facilitate it.

Could you network information across the entire economy and democratically develop a consensus plan for what we should use our collective labour capacity to achieve, dividing portions of production towards a great collaborative effort? Possibly. That might constitute a form of state, though how coercive it would have to be is up for debate. Certainly you'd imagine it could probably be less coercive and lovely than our current setup.

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.
actually-existing states achieve massive degrees of inter-regional transfers, so some mechanism to override a local consensus needs to be achievable, or otherwise it must be conceded that richer regions would regard poorer regions in much the same way richer countries regard poorer countries today

(in 1956 the Socialist International first recommended that the industrialized countries of the world set aside at least 1% of their GDP as development aid for the non-industrialized world; this has never been achieved)

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

OwlFancier posted:

The state or a state?

Also what kind of central planning, I guess? Can you have a central "economic planning office" that plays the country like railroad tycoon without the state? Probably not, that's a hierarchical way of looking at the world and requires an enforcement structure to facilitate it.

Could you network information across the entire economy and democratically develop a consensus plan for what we should use our collective labour capacity to achieve, dividing portions of production towards a great collaborative effort? Possibly. That might constitute a form of state, though how coercive it would have to be is up for debate. Certainly you'd imagine it could probably be less coercive and lovely than our current setup.

There's a reason why most anarchists talk about coercive hierarchy and not generally coercion full-stop. You can't do anything without being able to make wreckers, bad-faith actors, and the intransigent go along. You might as well throw up your hands and go home as soon as someone says "I think I have should have the freedom to kill you." There are of course exceptions since anarchists gonna anarchist.

The goal is to reduce the asymmetrical access to coercion such that Person A can't dictate to Person B, not that Person A can do loving whatever they want at the expense of People B1-Z999999 because to stop them would be coercion.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

OwlFancier posted:

The state or a state?

Also what kind of central planning, I guess? Can you have a central "economic planning office" that plays the country like railroad tycoon without the state? Probably not, that's a hierarchical way of looking at the world and requires an enforcement structure to facilitate it.

Could you network information across the entire economy and democratically develop a consensus plan for what we should use our collective labour capacity to achieve, dividing portions of production towards a great collaborative effort? Possibly. That might constitute a form of state, though how coercive it would have to be is up for debate. Certainly you'd imagine it could probably be less coercive and lovely than our current setup.

I dunno the difference between the state and a state.

Well, here's an imminent problem that I've been chewing on:

Climate change is going to displace and destroy massive communities of people. There going to be lots and lots of lost resources and land, and caring for those individuals is going to be a massive undertaking. Can it be adequately addressed without a "railroad tycoon" top-down style of planning? How can we coordinate all the necessary resources to be extracted, refined, manufactured, and delivered to the places that need them? Can spontaneous individual assistance really rise to the level needed, or will vast, perhaps even coerced assistance be required?

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Also, shoutout to the Mod that stickied this thread. Much love!

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Beefeater1980 posted:

The regression of China, Russia and Vietnam to capitalism are all examples of why I don’t think we should all go out and join a vanguard party with a view to overthrowing the decadent bourgeois state.

Post-colonial Asia gives us a lot of evidence that there are no easy answers I think: Malaysia, Taiwan, S Korea and Singapore (although that’s a special case) all stayed capitalist and managed to achieve a higher standard of living than Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos until those countries began experimenting with opening up their economies to capital again

I have questions about how standard of living is measured and concerns about the sustainability not underlying related practices.
Given the dominance of Capitalism and the general abuse by it of those that reject it, I question whether this is a meaningful measure at all.

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Nov 12, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The Oldest Man posted:

There's a reason why most anarchists talk about coercive hierarchy and not generally coercion full-stop. You can't do anything without being able to make wreckers, bad-faith actors, and the intransigent go along. You might as well throw up your hands and go home as soon as someone says "I think I have should have the freedom to kill you." There are of course exceptions since anarchists gonna anarchist.

The goal is to reduce the asymmetrical access to coercion such that Person A can't dictate to Person B, not that Person A can do loving whatever they want at the expense of People B1-Z999999 because to stop them would be coercion.

Sure, but like, there's a question of how institutionally coercive any massive scale organization would be. If you're dealing with millions of people then whole swathes of them could just be a rounding error. It is easy to imagine such an organization doing institutional harm even if it isn't trying to. As I said though I would expect it to be better even if not perfect.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

I dunno the difference between the state and a state.

Well, here's an imminent problem that I've been chewing on:

Climate change is going to displace and destroy massive communities of people. There going to be lots and lots of lost resources and land, and caring for those individuals is going to be a massive undertaking. Can it be adequately addressed without a "railroad tycoon" top-down style of planning? How can we coordinate all the necessary resources to be extracted, refined, manufactured, and delivered to the places that need them? Can spontaneous individual assistance really rise to the level needed, or will vast, perhaps even coerced assistance be required?

I would probably respond with a counter-question, can top down planning meet those needs by its very nature? If you put some ideal benevolent government in charge of any nation on earth, and they decided to devote a bunch of the country's resources to helping people outside the country or even to helping the poorest within the country, would they ever be able to do it? Or would the bulk of people in that country view that as an imposition and resist it?

Can you force people to care about others by just telling them they have to and threatening them if they don't? Can you wield the structure of our governments to achieve good things or are they structurally limited to doing bad things because their particular brand of coercion is inherently destructive? Can you create societal cohesion out of nothing by government fiat, basically? I don't think you can.

Which, incidentally, is why I think universalism is an important part of any government policy. I think welfare for the poorest is a bad approach because it is often very unpopular with people who don't use it, which means that it is very politically convenient to cut welfare programs and you can easily find a significant portion of the population that will support it. Conversely I think things like universal healthcare are popular once implemented because everyone uses it, everyone relies on it, everyone integrates it into their lives. If you are wanting to build a model under something resembling the current political structure, for ensuring people's welfare, it's very important to make it something that as many people as possible will be affected positively by, you have to create common ground and experiences. I don't think you can use the state to coerce people to be charitable, essentially. If you want to use it to help people I think you've got to make the program universal.

And of course even that has the issue of where does the state get its resources from to fund those programs? A lot of western countries with good social programs get a lot of their resources from exploiting people in other countries. If you cut that off, could you make things sustainable by extracting the resources from your own people and land?

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Nov 12, 2020

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Cpt_Obvious posted:

I dunno the difference between the state and a state.

Well, here's an imminent problem that I've been chewing on:

Climate change is going to displace and destroy massive communities of people. There going to be lots and lots of lost resources and land, and caring for those individuals is going to be a massive undertaking. Can it be adequately addressed without a "railroad tycoon" top-down style of planning? How can we coordinate all the necessary resources to be extracted, refined, manufactured, and delivered to the places that need them? Can spontaneous individual assistance really rise to the level needed, or will vast, perhaps even coerced assistance be required?

The closest comparable situation I can think of is the Aragon collectives in the Spanish revolution. I recommend this account of how many of them operated. https://libcom.org/history/peasants-aragon

Well the villages of Aragon in 36 found themselves in a pretty dire situation, years of lack of development, refugees and war and daily artillery bombardment. And despite all that they were able to collectivise, build schools, link up with each other and agree on boundaries, share surpluses for needs, and also support a war effort and the advances into fascist territory. They weren't perfect, they made mistakes, some were more collectivised than their neighbours, some had more capabilities etc. But in general they accomplished a lot in very trying circumstances.

Then afterwards they were incorporated into a centrally planned republic, staffed with experts from all over Europe, and across the board everything collapsed. The co-operation, the productivity, the infrastructure projects, the ability to support the war all evaporated, and the fascists soon found themselves making many advances as the government fled to Valencia.

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Cpt_Obvious posted:

I dunno the difference between the state and a state.

Well, here's an imminent problem that I've been chewing on:

Climate change is going to displace and destroy massive communities of people. There going to be lots and lots of lost resources and land, and caring for those individuals is going to be a massive undertaking. Can it be adequately addressed without a "railroad tycoon" top-down style of planning? How can we coordinate all the necessary resources to be extracted, refined, manufactured, and delivered to the places that need them? Can spontaneous individual assistance really rise to the level needed, or will vast, perhaps even coerced assistance be required?

What is the difference between "coerced assistance" under a capitalist system and under whatever system you're describing?

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Ferrinus posted:

I don't think there's actually much daylight between the Manifesto and Capital.

I am genuinely interested in your line of thinking on this point. My general position in life is that ideology is, in general, axiomatic, and science is deductive. I think the manifesto is a call to arms, whereas Capital is a more phlegmatic dissection of long-term forces.

That's my opinion, but I'd like to hear you expand yours.

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.
contemporary anarchism in the Two Cheers vein seems to descend more from late Malatesta methodologically-individualist anarchism - where the good society is composed of people who are personally, dispositionally anarchist and voluntarily come together to form a society that reflects those outlooks - rather than anarchism achieved via institutional transformation producing a proletariat that can live under anarchism - there doesn't seem much actual appetite for forcing revolutionary change, in a non-metaphorical sense, on people who might reject living under anarchism even when given the option

early 20th century Spanish anarchism was massively anti-clerical to a degree that contemporary anarchisms find repellent

Sharks Eat Bear
Dec 25, 2004

I was chatting with friends today about the sheer amount of bullshit corporate jargon doublespeak that feels like it's become increasingly common and increasingly... unhinged? for lack of a better term.

Made me wonder, was this phenomenon predicted by Marx or Marxists in any analyses of capitalism? I can see how it fits into the fundamental conflicts of capitalism like class struggle and the declining profit rate -- the owners need to use increasingly obfuscating terminology in order to disorient and numb the workers to how bleak the capitalist status quo has become.

It's fascinating at work to see some of my coworkers, who for the most part are just regular, nice people -- total normies, but not like egoistic scions of business or anything -- that seem to enthusiastically latch onto the jargon. I honestly can't tell if they're just playing the game and realize that it's a pointless risk to be the stick in the mud about how we need to build empathy maps to achieve true customer centricity so that we can enable pull solutions for the entire market ecosystem -- :barf: -- or if they just don't see through the bullshit.

I probably wouldn't have considered my petty, bourgeoisie workplace venting through a (superficial) Marxist lens prior to reading this thread, so thanks for that! :)

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


ronya posted:

contemporary anarchism in the Two Cheers vein seems to descend more from late Malatesta methodologically-individualist anarchism - where the good society is composed of people who are personally, dispositionally anarchist and voluntarily come together to form a society that reflects those outlooks - rather than anarchism achieved via institutional transformation producing a proletariat that can live under anarchism - there doesn't seem much actual appetite for forcing revolutionary change, in a non-metaphorical sense, on people who might reject living under anarchism even when given the option

early 20th century Spanish anarchism was massively anti-clerical to a degree that contemporary anarchisms find repellent

The idea that that the way to respond to the existential threat of climate change is through voluntary, temporary, self-organized communities is... something.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The idea that involuntary, hierarchically organized societies are not structurally predisposed towards causing the existential threat that is climate change, might also be something :v:

Are such societies even capable of recognizing or caring that millions upon millions of people will die, on a societal level? Are their administrators capable of doing anything other than thinking "well I'll probably be OK cos I'm at the top, so we don't need to do anything"?

Basically what do you think is the cause of the inaction on climate change if not the way our societies are structured?

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Nov 12, 2020

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


OwlFancier posted:

The idea that involuntary, hierarchically organized societies are not structurally predisposed towards causing the existential threat that is climate change, might also be something :v:

The cat is already out of the bag - climate change does exist and it has been caused. The way to respond to it is not through anarchism.

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

Aruan posted:

The idea that that the way to respond to the existential threat of climate change is through voluntary, temporary, self-organized communities is... something.

quite, but it was also the predominant Western anarchist response to the existential threat of nuclear annihilation for a good couple of decades, so the salience of existential threats don't really seem to challenge the outlook much

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Aruan posted:

The cat is already out of the bag - climate change does exist and it has been caused. The way to respond to it is not through anarchism.

Again, though, are our current societies strucutrally capable of responding to it?

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Climate change is going to displace and destroy massive communities of people. There going to be lots and lots of lost resources and land, and caring for those individuals is going to be a massive undertaking. Can it be adequately addressed without a "railroad tycoon" top-down style of planning? How can we coordinate all the necessary resources to be extracted, refined, manufactured, and delivered to the places that need them? Can spontaneous individual assistance really rise to the level needed, or will vast, perhaps even coerced assistance be required?

So this is a really, really good question and I think you can generalize it a bit:

There are problems faced by even idealized socialist communities that require capital projects of a scope beyond that which a community can address. Not all of these can be reduced to community-level problems that are solvable with human-scale responses. Consider climate change or war by a capitalistic nation state on the socialist community or (for the fully ideal, post-revolutionary Full World Communism society) an asteroid that is going to destroy the Earth. However, construction of the capital or appropriation of production required to address those problems will create accumulations of capital and individuals and groups of individuals that can make decisions asymmetrically rather than democratically across all of the communities who are affected.

What's the solution to that look like that doesn't then itself lead to a regression to defacto capitalism? Or, put in terms that I like, how do you create a permanent mutual aid infrastructure that can literally supplant capital statist control of our industrial life-sustaining systems and do poo poo at macro scales like allocating cement output, trucks, etc. to an impoverished community that needs a seawall to avoid being destroyed by sea level rise? What structure is used to decide to build that seawall rather than relocating that community?

Capitalism itself solves this by just saying gently caress those people unless they're rich and the resources are better spent re-paving the rich people community parking lots a tenth time this year. The central planning bureau obviously can solve this but in my opinion a) it will make decisions about whether that community is worth saving using criteria that don't necessarily include that community even getting a say, and b) (probably more important) in my opinion it leads inexorably back to capitalism since centralized control of capital and production is easily co-opted back into centralized ownership of capital and profit-taking. Federated decision-making seems to me to be an obvious answer but that gets harder and harder to keep that from log-jamming the larger that the federation becomes.

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


OwlFancier posted:

Again, though, are our current societies strucutrally capable of responding to it?

My answer? No, but anarchism is also not the answer. I don't know if the focus of this thread is really supposed to be "how do you achieve leftist goals in the world in which we live to create a society capable of responding to the existential threat of climate change", though, and not just describing particular types of leftist political theory or historiography. I think there does a come a point where after you accept, say, that historical materialism is a meaningful explanatory mechanism, you ask "what next?"

Purple Prince
Aug 20, 2011

Baka-nin posted:

The closest comparable situation I can think of is the Aragon collectives in the Spanish revolution. I recommend this account of how many of them operated. https://libcom.org/history/peasants-aragon

Well the villages of Aragon in 36 found themselves in a pretty dire situation, years of lack of development, refugees and war and daily artillery bombardment. And despite all that they were able to collectivise, build schools, link up with each other and agree on boundaries, share surpluses for needs, and also support a war effort and the advances into fascist territory. They weren't perfect, they made mistakes, some were more collectivised than their neighbours, some had more capabilities etc. But in general they accomplished a lot in very trying circumstances.

Then afterwards they were incorporated into a centrally planned republic, staffed with experts from all over Europe, and across the board everything collapsed. The co-operation, the productivity, the infrastructure projects, the ability to support the war all evaporated, and the fascists soon found themselves making many advances as the government fled to Valencia.

Foucault would have a thing or two to say about this.

In general the way successful advanced societies, whether capitalist or communist, function isn’t to centralise decision making at the expense of local actors (like the Aragon villages example). Instead it’s to decentralise decision making and diffuse it across many local polities. In China local administrations are largely autonomous despite being able to be disciplined and replaced by Beijing if they step too far out of line. In the UK most of the services you directly interact with are run by local government not the state. And in the US it’s just a mess.

The reason this works, for Foucault, is that it makes the state simultaneously distant and omnipotent and close by and relatable. Ultimately the goal of a state is to get citizens to self regulate such that the state doesn’t need to do anything to maintain its power: its power appears to derive from the consent the governed. But in reality this is achieved through sophisticated methods of socialisation - in Discipline and Punish, most famously, he compares the logic of the 19th century school system with that of the prison. Both have the same goal- to produce compliant citizens.

To ensure successful central planning of the economy, then, we need to make sure that local stakeholders feel they have some influence over the implementation, at least, of that central planning. In the case of the Aragon villages this could readily have been achieved by keeping the existing structure of the village system, identifying key individuals, and keeping them briefed on the Republic’s strategic priorities. They can figure out the details themselves.

The problems with central planning arise when people feel like it’s imposed from outside via coercion, and even where such governance is successful it fails because of local bureaucrats. See the notorious Soviet nail factories for what happens when people perceive their work as something imposed on them rather than self-determined.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil
For the record I am still working on the post challenging the narrative that mid-century famine deaths in China were the result of agricultural mutualization primarily (hint: they weren't) and also the numbers usually quoted, but it is involving rereading some books to make sure I know what I'm talking about, but that poster did meaningfully engage with the question and provide some (lousy, but I'll explain why in the post) sources.

Also, tangentially related but I'm reading some interesting research right now that challenges the idea that 'management' in enterprises are harmful primarily because they are the mediator between the exploiting class and the exploited class but rsther that management in enterprises that are not exploitative strictly speaking (democratically owned and controlled enterprises with proportional surplus sharing) is still inherently harmful and that management as a class should probably be done away with in order to avoid demutualization. (Battilani & Zamagni, 2012 in Business History)

ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.
duly note that Foucault was writing at a time before tax revolts showed the limits of top-down socialization in effecting acceptance

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I can't say I can think of a better answer to the question than taking power out of the hands of the minority and spread it around as much as possible... What is climate change if not the result of a society structured to benefit a handful of people at the expense of everyone else? What is the cause of continued inaction if not the unwillingness to change that model of organization? How can that form of organization possibly not result in killing millions of people?

Like I do not get why it's just axiomatically "not the answer"? Like yeah it's a loving difficult answer but what other conclusion can you draw? How else do you square the circle of our oligarchic society being the means by which the ecological price of capitalism has been sidelined for decades? Along with every other price it demands? Who benefits from that if not the minority of people our society is geared around pandering to? How do you not look at that and come to the conclusion that that structure is the cause of the threat, the cause of the lack of action towards the threat? How can you possibly respond to the threat without taking apart the things that cause and support it?

How can you fight a thing that is demanded by our society without changing that society? Climate change isn't our society just... going wrong inexplicably, it's an entirely logical end point of how our society works? Everyone and everything must be sacrificed to uphold the hierarchy, that is how our society functions.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Nov 12, 2020

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply