Is Communism good?

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Is Communism good? This poll is closed.
Yes	375	66.25%
No	191	33.75%
Total:	523 votes

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Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Social Democracy is unworkable in the long term because Social Democratic parties inevitably get coopted by capital and turned into milquetoast liberal parties who proceed to dismantle all the accomplishments of Social Democracy.

Communism, on the other hand, is pretty radical.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 12:50

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:56

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Cicero posted:

People keep saying this is happening in western European countries, does the data bear that out? Like, if that was happening, you'd expect taxes as a % of GDP to be steadily going down, right? Is that occurring?

Yes to the first, no to the second. All of western Europe has continuously seen cuts to government programs for decades. As for the second question you can spend tax money on things besides social services and more importantly an aging population will naturally consume more resources when it comes to healthcare and the like, and western Europe is aging fast. Therefore, while tax rates have been lowered the effect is masked by the increase in non-discretionary spending. The right wing is working on that one as we speak, though.

This is not a very interesting question, though. In a wider context looking at levels of social spending is a bit myopic because a party's willingness to spend on social programs is not necessarily correlated to said party's professed political ideology, and Social Democracy is ideologically dead as a doornail regardless of tax intake. The only major political figure in western Europe who can be said to still subscribe to it is Corbyn in the U.K: and most of his own party has dedicated the majority of their time to stabbing him in the back because of it. And if we look a bit further back in time, the original mission of Social Democracy as a way to achieve Socialism through gradual reform was pretty universally abandoned back in the seventies.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 14:12

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Turns out that socialism is the worst form of government, excepting all others that have been tried.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 23:52

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Tesseraction posted:

Isn't this basically a perfect metaphor for temporarily-embarrassed millionaires who believe they're so close to hitting it big.

It's almost as ironic as the idea that humans are selfish by nature and motivated by personal gain being used to defend an economic system that relies on the vast majority of people working for somebody else.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 01:02

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

dk2m posted:

This is a good post, appreciate your thoughts.

For your first point, I'd argue that the definition of capitalism to simply relate workers to some sort of economic output isn't enough. By focusing just on workers, we miss the utilitarian aspects that increase economic output that capitalism theory advocates - things like specialization, profit motive, competition and free trade. The US nationalized heavy industry like GM as well as banks during the 2008 crisis - this runs absolutely counter to allowing the invisible hand maximizing utility and competitive efficiency. So, I don't think things like healthcare, social security, etc are "nice to have" but are instead required for a functioning so called "capitalist" society. The 2008 crisis showed just how volatile unregulated capital can be and the bailout was the state trying to stabilize the situation. The financial industry itself advocated for the necessity for state intervention because they knew that without confidence returning, the entire system would collapse. This is nothing new, but a recent and relevant example of state intervention, which is why I don't think we can 100% call the US a capitalist society.

As far as using the Soviet model as a case study or history lesson - I'm hesitant to buy into that. Zizek and neo-communists make this argument, but the issue I always come back to is that real people are impacted. We can absolutely say that modern first world nations are not perfect - but they are not failed states. Revolutionary action in the first world is an upend to a relatively decent living standard - at which point is the communist project "ready" to begin? When do we come to a consensus that the kinks have been worked out? What do we do with people that don't agree with it? How do we transition without catastrophe? These questions seem to be quickly dismissed.

I don't disagree that we can improve, but the dogged insistence in the coherence of the communist ideology confuses me. If we have seen marked improvements in the real world through socialism, what real reason is there to scrap that and create a workers paradise which itself sounds pseudo-religious to me?

However, the psychological aspects of neoliberalism has indeed proved to be insidious - the turn to nationalism across the world today can be rationalized as a failure of the mainstream leftist ideology. That being said, I still believe that the real work is not continue to massage 19th century thought, but rather to fight to improve labor's negotiating power, create more safety nets, and improve basic living standards all within the framework of a regulated capital market.

It's because your model leaves the capitalist class in power, and any good you manage to accomplish will eventually be undone because the people who control the economic power in society will do their utmost to roll back every progressive reform as soon as they're able to. Even in the very best case senario we're eternally doomed to refight the same drat battle every thirty or forty years, which is an absurd goal to set.

Also societal transformation doesn't work like in Civilization where you research some new civic and then click a button to implement it fully formed, hth.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 17:31

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

dk2m posted:

Assuming you're talking about the US - what capitalist class? What does that even mean in this day and age? It's not 1905 anymore, there are no evil guys twirling mustaches behind their huge oak desk. The people that run businesses respond to external pressures - communists don't. You can protest and peacefully change society in ours, you cannot in a communist system. There will be winners and losers like in every system, but the moral case in a communist society is built around the idea that anyone that doesn't fall in line is a traitor to revolutionary ideals. Even neo-communists STILL disdain socialists - if they can't even get along with fellow leftists, what hope is there for anyone else?

The basic practical questions of communism are never, ever answered. It's always couched in broad, sweeping "history is on our side" rhetoric.

Why do you respond to criticism of your own ideas with some weird word salad attacking a position that nobody ITT really holds? Could you maybe try to address points raised instead of doing a bad Ronald Reagan impression?

Besides that, the capitalist class consists of the people who could subsist entirely on their income from capital gains if the chose to do so, hth.

dk2m posted:

And yes, I too remember rolling back child labor laws.

The capitalist system has outsourced its child labour to third-world sweatshops, just so you know.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 18:17

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Look, obviously when some dude with a big hat decides that millions should starve it's super bad and he's a monster, but when price speculation couses millions to starve that's just the unknowable invisible hand of the free market at work, and as such nobody is to blame and we don't have to do any self-reflection.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 18:48

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Have you ever heard of Chambers of Commerce? Even if they like to pretend otherwise the capitalist class has a very strong class consciousness, which they use to further their goals as a class. This isn't in contradiction with Marx at all, because it's entirely possible that the best way of maximizing profits is collusion with others capitalists. In fact, it would be very strange if Marx didn't appreciate this, seeing how he goes on at length about how the bourgeois state is in fact controlled by and working in the interests of the capitalist class.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 19:46

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

hakimashou posted:

Communism is good if you like monstrous crime, unthinkable suffering, and mass murder, but I don't, so I am not a fan.

You misspelled Capitalism there.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 13:30

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

asdf32 posted:

And that's really a worthless distinction.

A computer programmer who saves 50% of their income and is happy living on 40k a year can acheive that by age 40 meanwhile an actor making millions might save nothing while ultimately controlling orders of magnitude more economic power over their lifetime.

lol. Sure some code monkey will make enough money to net themselves a capital gains income of 40k a year in about twenty years. That's almost as reasonable as you thinking that economic power is determined by spending. To get you started, the economic power in society is determined by control of means of production, hth, but I know it won't.

asdf32 posted:

The fundamental problem of communism/marxism to me is this degenerate model of power. Capitalists have it all and capitalists are defined narrowly and technically.

The problem doesn not lie in the model, it lies in the fact that you're ignorant as gently caress and entirely unwilling to learn.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 15:33

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

asdf32 posted:

But 'controlling the means of production' isn't actually defined by the legal technicality of ownership since there are a myriad of ways owner's power is checked and limited. The car in my driveway represents a significant chunk of economic output which I managed to divert towards me. The owners can't stay in business without delivering cars to people like me. That's control and power.

Separately far from all power is economic which is why simply moving power from economic capitalists to the political bureaucracy doesn't automatically solve problems - something that's obvious if you have a reasonable model of power and its problems.

The car in your driveway doesn't even represent a rounding error of the total economic output of a single car manufacturer, not to mention the entire national economy.

Like, holy poo poo dude, I'm surprised that even you can be this goddamn ill-informed about the basic concepts under discussion. You have no clea what you're even talking about which is why you're pretending that "regulations exist" is some kind of silver buller argument, when it is in fact a complete nonsense reply to a nonsense strawman based on a nonsense caricature of Marxism that you've cobbled together half from concepts that you've misunderstood and half from poo poo you've made up yourself.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 16:08

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

khwarezm posted:

I don't think this is a very good analysis.The Welfare state was in it's genesis well before the formation of the Soviet Union as you can see from things like Social legislation in places like Germany decades before. A lot of that was an attempt to undermine support for leftist movements but nevertheless it laid down the groundwork. If anything you could make the argument that by the 30s the deprivations of Stalin had seriously damaged internationalist Socialist movements while also making it easier for leaders in the west to tar far left movements as Russian subterfuge, and through all of this Fascists pretty much wrongfooted their Communist foes in most countries until the end of the war.

Later, the erosion of the worker's position started way before the fall of SU, mostly as a result of the rise of new right movements represented by people like Thatcher and Reagan coming off of the economic crises of the 1970s. Within China the retooling of the state and its economy to what you see today began under the auspices of the likes of Deng Xiaoping in the late 70s too. Even ignoring all of this the Soviet Union was hardly a relevant force in most of the world, especially the west, in trying to protect workers and their rights by this time.

The reason that the postwar consensus about the necessity of the construction of the modern welfare state was even possible to form was the explicit argument that social welfare would undercut the appeal of communist parties in Western Europe. Just go back and look at what postwar leaders were saying about the welfare state and it's competely obvious. Even people like Churchill and de Gaulle were all in on what would be considered the reddest of communism today.

Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Mar 4, 2017

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 20:04

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

Cool story, but how do you put beneficial ownership of industry in the hands of the proletariat and keep it there without a colossal instrument of force (i.e. a State), and what possible reason can you have for thinking this institution is not going to serve its own interests by extracting rents from producers?

Are you some kind of lolbertarian or something? Because the idea that the state inevitably is an institution whose interests stands in opposition to those of the people is pretty drat suspect.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 08:09

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

Extremely not.

States are obviously better than the alternative. But I don't think getting them to behave themselves is a trivial engineering problem.

It's not at all impossible for the interests of the powerful to align with those of the governed. It's keeping them that way that's the issue, and communists, in my experience, have a very difficult time explaining how to stop markets from allocating wealth in ways they don't like by means that don't expose labour to a massive risk of exploitation at the hands of those who control martial power.

But of course you're more concerned with what the fact that I thought to ask the question re communism and the principal/agent problem says about me than actually considering the issue. V suspicious that I would want to talk about the practicalities of restraining power.

In that case you're describing a problem that is at the very least just as prevalent under capitalism, which makes your objection nonsensical and your claim to want to talk about the practicalities of restraining power kinda strange.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 10:31

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

Wow, really!? No poo poo, I hadn't at all noticed the interests of the ruling elite aren't currently aligned with the masses'.

"This problem isn't already solved so it's strange that you'd want to talk about how to solve it."

No, the strange part comes when you object to a proposal to decentralize the economic power in society by acting incredulous about how anybody could possibly think that a socialist state wouldn't inherently set its interests in opposition to those of the people. It doesn�t exactly sound like how you start a good faith discussion about how to prevent the abuse of power in a hypothetical socialist society.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 10:53

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

This is pretty funny coming from someone who would so obviously rather discuss why anybody would want to talk about preventing abuses of power than actually talk about preventing abuses of power.

You're the one who came into the discussion being a right rear end and demanding to know how somebody possibly could believe that the state would be non-malevolent and are now falling back on casting thinly-velied aspersions on the motivations of others. Either you're arguing in bad faith, of you're being horribly bad at communicating.

Smudgie Buggler posted:

I never said I thought the problem was unique to communism, or socialism. Like I said, it's really just the principal/agent problem.

It is obviously, however, a much bigger problem for a communist than it is for, say, a social democrat, because the task of a social democratic state isn't to arrest the accumulation of capital and prevent the exploitation of Labour, but to let all that poo poo happen and then skim a bunch off wealth off the top and redistribute it to ease the material suffering of the proletariat. As far as Capital is concerned, a socdem state does basically the same thing as a self-interested aristocracy or monarchy. That it wants to take the rents it extracts from production in the form of taxes and distribute crumbs to the poor rather than letting them starve and instead building golden palaces full of nubile slave girls isn't of much concern to Capital. So long as the same power by which taxes are levied also grants sufficiently robust property rights, Capital doesn't care and is reasonably tolerant of a certain degree of taxation because the threat of capital flight keeps it from getting out of hand. When a socdem state goes feral (as they frequently do) and the custodians decide to keep extracted wealth for themselves instead of giving out bread to the needy, it's just behaving like a self-interested monarchy and Capital still doesn't care because the exact same mechanisms are operating to keep business running relatively smoothly for the capitalist.

A communist state, on the other hand, wants to go substantially further. It doesn't just want to skim some off the top of Capital's pie (for whatever reason), it wants to stop Capital from accumulating altogether by placing and keeping beneficial ownership of the means of production in the hands of Labour. Now, even if a Marxist wizard could magically wave his wand and give Labour the means of production instantaneously, he can't just call it a day and have everybody go about producing and trading as free as air with their resources. Some people are going to do less productive things than others and pretty soon you're going to get people making trades that are more to one party's benefit than another, and oh poo poo accumulation of capital is happening again. gently caress. "Laissez-faire communism" being an obvious oxymoron, this is no good. We can't just take all Capital's resources, redistribute it evenly and leave everything alone, so we need something to keep the means of production in Labour's hands. So, before even arriving at the question of whether central planning is strictly necessary, it's clear whatever mechanism or institution whose job it is to keep things egalitarian in a communist society needs substantially more control over production and the allocation of resources than a socdem or even a despotic society does.

Is it hoping too much that you see now why the degree of power required to not merely instantiate a transfer of beneficial ownership of the means of production from Capital to Labour, but to keep the exploitation of Labour from re-emerging as competitive forces do their thing in a market environment poses a greater risk to the governed than the power of a socdem or self-interested monarchy? The greater the power, the more urgent the problem of binding it to a particular scope becomes.

'
Your assumptions are utter horseshit, which explains why your conclusions are so rear end-backwards. First of all ,Capital doesn't "tolerate" an actual Social Democratic state, rather it is completely opposed to its existence and it will work to undermine it as soon as the opportunity arises. See the past forty years and the complete destruction and/or cooption of every single Social Democratic party across the entire western world for a pertinent example.

From this immediately follows that if a Social Democratic state is to survive and not degenerate into neoliberalism with a human face, it would need to enact the exact same massive amount of coercion towards Capital that you identify as a problem in the communist case.

Even worse, you also fail to realize that once the socialization of the economy has taken place, it would be just as possible to prevent excess capital accumulation by taxation and redistribution as it would in the Social Democratic case.

Hence there is no inherent substantial difference between the two cases, and going from one state of affairs to another would at worst be a lateral move. This is why you're talking nonsense, pal.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 14:51

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

The rest of your post is such a sputtering mess of na�ve indignation, I have no confidence you'd come close to getting the message even if I did pick it apart in good faith. But I will address this:

How the hell are you going to tax and redistribute all the drat Capital anybody might accumulate from their endeavours without killing the incentive to produce?

Unless, of course, you incentivise productive behaviour by other means. Such as a truncheon. In which case, you're making my case for me.

You're literally projecting so hard that you fail to notice the difference between "excessive" and "all".

Also this is a very unsubtle way of trying to dodge the fact that you have no actual rebuttal.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 11:03

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

He stammered, rebutting quite literally nothing at all.

Just rephrase the question:

How are you going to tax and redistribute any more of the Capital that might accumulate than social democratic states already do without killing the incentive to produce?

So your silver bullet rebuttal is to pretend that A: There's some fixed amount of capital that is redistributed by all Social Democtatic states and B: redistributing even a single red cent more will immediately kill off the incentive to produce?

Like, I get that you have a strawman that you really, really, want to argue against, but I don't think I can stand in for the voices in your head as I'm not a mind reader.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 13:42

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Smudgie Buggler posted:

Dude, if you can't answer the question just stop.

I'm not sure that I can answer a continuous barrage of nonsense assertions, no, espeically not when you jump from one to another without even trying to acknowledge the counterarguments directed towards you.

Smudgie Buggler posted:

How are you going to keep people producing if you're going to systematically take away their beneficial ownership of the profits that result?

This is a pretty weird claim to make when arguing against the idea that the workers should own the means of production, and even stranger because this is literally what happens under Capitalism and people are somehow still managing to produce stuff.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 13:50

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

the world owes central planning a debt as well for ridding the world of the awfulness that was USSR

You mean the central planning that took the USSR from a burned-down peasant country to the world's second industrial superpower in ~30 years and this with the most destructive war in modern history throwing a spanner in the works?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 20:49

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

that was actually the NEP which wasn't centrally planned

I suppose it explains a lot if you're not even aware of when industrialization really took off in the USSR.

EDIT: Like, the book to read is right here.

Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Mar 29, 2017

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 21:02

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

lmbo

You're not supposed to ironicat yourself.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 21:22

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

please tell me more about how insanely good stalin was and how we should all follow his example

Given your grasp on Soviet history it's not surprising that you believe this.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 21:26

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Flowers For Algeria posted:

Huh, how weird, hakimashou doesn't consider mass murder to be the worse parts of fascism.

Their victims weren't brown enough for his tastes.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 22:40

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

I'm not sure the nazis were necessarily the bolshevik fan club.

Like that seems up there with "palestinians convinced hitler to do the holocaust" in terms of stupid ideas.

Let's not give him more ideas, now. After all we're talking with someone who thinks that the poor widdle nazis would have been super good if it wasn't for those wily reds.

EDIT: Like, consider the following in context with the dude's latest drivel:

hakimashou posted:

Even in places where communists failed to enact their gruesome plans, there was still often a lot of suffering and death as a result of the necessary resistance to their efforts.

Pretty much the only thing that has ever been able to legitimize far-right politics is its opposition to genocidal communism.

Seems like the nazis weren't the only ones cribbing judging by the unironic lifting of neo-nazi talking points here.

Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Mar 29, 2017

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 23:44

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

hakimashou posted:

The Nazis weren't bad "because they were right wing," they were bad because they were genocidal and brutally repressive.

Communists aren't bad "because they are left wing," they are bad because they are genocidal and brutally repressive.

Look at you trying to walk back your unironic nazi apologia.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 23:59

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

hakimashou posted:

The debate is over to the same extent the debate about the Nazis is over.

You'll have some people who refuse to admit they were bad, but everyone else has figured it out.

You might want to join these people instead of trying to make excuses for the nazis.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 10:59

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

hakimashou posted:

Hitler's manifesto doesn't plan for genocide any more overtly than Marx's, but it is the inevitable result of either one's depraved ideas being put into action.

The Red Mein Kampf isn't any less despicable just because it's 'red.' The Nazis "seized the means of production" before mass-murdering the people they hated just like communists do.

The differences between a communist and a Nazi are purely incidental, both are equally debased and despicable.

"I totally think the nazis were bad. Now let me tell you how nazism is sometimes justified becuse communism bad." - A poster who is totally not cribbing from Stormfront

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 12:01

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

asdf32 posted:

Making strict assumptions about how humans will behave in certain situations is a human nature argument. In marx's case TRPF depends on capitalists behaving exactly one way and depends on that behavior (destructive competition) being inevitable and impossible to restrain or reform.

Marx does not ascribe the aggregate behaviour of capitalists to human nature, but rather to material necessity brought on by the inherent logic of capitalist economy.

But then again you've been wrong about literally everything, so you not getting Marx 101 is not surprising.

TheImmigrant posted:

Voluntary sharing is good. Mandated sharing is evil.

I see you've also come to the conclusion that capitalism is immoral.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 19:11

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

asdf32 posted:

Even assuming ultimately destructive competition is indeed logical it takes an assumption in human nature to believe capitalists must necesarily persue that behavior rather than any other path which doesn't meet the same end.

No it doesn't, all it requires is the assumption that the capitalists who do not act in certain ways will eventually stop being capitalists on account of them going out of business.

Again literally babby's first Marx, but then again, it's hard to know anything when you're not interested in learning.

TheImmigrant posted:

Capitalism is an absence of regulation. A negative quality cannot be immoral.

lol, what the gently caress are you even on about?

EDIT: Like, this isn't even failing babby's first Marx, it's failing babby's first Smith.

Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Mar 30, 2017

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 19:20

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

wateroverfire posted:

...yeah but that is an assumption that deserves a critical look.

If you like, but it's still not an assumption about human nature.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 19:27

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

asdf32 posted:

What if they don't for cultural reasons?

What if they're constrained by regulations (note: a logical behavior by the voting masses).

Neither of these scenarios are based on an assumption about human nature either, but thank you for killing your own dumbshit argument due to sheer contrarianism.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 19:29

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

caps on caps on caps posted:

Well, it would be time for a new theory which is actually not wrong, right?
Well let's look at the intellectual output of left wing econ in the past 50 years.
Nothing?
poo poo let's try to revive Marx again. Hey, I the transformation problem is not a problem because... look at this accounting matrix.

loving disgrace to Marx' memory actually

Just because you're ignorant of it doesn't mean that no further work within Marxist economics has taken place since Marx. People like Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran were adressing your list of problems over half a century ago, and in addition you've got a whole bunch of japanese Marxist economists like Okishio who have some pretty solid refinements of Marx.

Problem is, these threads never get that far because you have to explain babby's first Marx to a buncha bad-faith morons.

caps on caps on caps posted:

The first Marxists who discovers that centralized mechanisms can actually do better in some cases is gonna become a loving superstar. So many verbal theories and case studies to write. Now if only they could read econ journals

I sometimes have to read orthodox econ journals, but I prefer not to since I've got real science to do.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 20:17

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

caps on caps on caps posted:

the problem is you can't because addressing the old paradigm is not the same as progress
which is why Marxist econ has zero impact, while Piketty is making big bucks galore (hint: nothing to do with ideology. PSE is heterodox and red as gently caress)
Marxism is dead and good thing it is

So you don't actually know poo poo about Marxist economics fresher than Marx himself while pontificating on the subject, and yet you try to call others intellectully shallow? :cmon:

caps on caps on caps posted:

this is why leftism is dying

its

u

Truly some thrilling intellectual prowess on display right here.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 21:44

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Wait, now I'm confused, is Marxism supposed to be the irrelevant dead ideology or the insiduous conspiracy that secretly runs the world here?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 22:14

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

where is this mythical planet you live on where self professed intellectuals run the world lol

Hey buddy, I just want to know which conspiracy theory we're running with here.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 22:23

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

falcon2424 posted:

This isn't really a thing. Labor Theory of Value is historically interesting, but isn't seriously used in modern econ. If you think I'm wrong, show me the "Marxist Economics" research that's actually happening.

Since anyone can write a book, let's talk papers that have been published in a top-40 journal in the last 20 years. If "Marxist Economics" is actually a thing, there should be a whole bunch of LTV-related papers to pick from.

E: Just to be clear, I'm sure Google Scholar will find "Marx" in some papers. He's mentioned. I'm looking for a paper that uses LTV to answer a question that modern economists are actually working on.

It's because orthodox econ, despite its pretense of being on the same level as the natural sciences, is a super politicized subject. While there is some good work that gets done regardless, it has to fall within the acceptable ideological spectrum to be considered.

Also if you have a problem with the law of value, you might want to explain exactly what that is rather than just toss out the term.

falcon2424 posted:

Who's talking about "capitalist society"? I'm asking about academics.

Academics are all about the esoteric fringe.

This is wrong. Academics at the top level are mostly about the desire for personal fame with a larger or smaller side dish of intellectual curiosity. This is usually not a bad combo for motivating people, but unfortunately orthodox econ has a shortcut to fame and fortune which is saying things that very rich people want to hear.

Goa Tse-tung posted:

the SPD isn't social democratic btw, ever since ~~Schr�der~~Ebert they are traitors to their own cause

Fixed that for you.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2017 10:08

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Cicero posted:

Command economies probably could be more effective using modern technology, but a) their economic weaknesses seem to usually stem from ideological stubbornness/blindness (with the price controls that Ardennes brought up being a good example), not lack of access to the right tools, and b) the bigger problem is that every country with a fully socialized economy and every country with a government that's trying to get there, always seems to become authoritarian (Venezuela being the latest example). Capitalist countries have a variety of successes and failures with democracy, but communist countries always seem to fail at permitting actual representative government.

Dude, Venezuela doesn't have anything even close to a fully socialized economy.

As for actually existing communism the more reasonable explanation is that Leninism and most of its variants doesn't permit very representative government, and since the USSR was authoritarian from the get-go due to necessity and later due to ideological rigidity and furthermore either imposed its own system on other countries by force of arms or by exporting revolution our sample of actually existing socialist countries is likely not very representative of all possible socialist systems, which makes the whole "socialism always leads to dictatorship" argument kinda suspect.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2017 21:19

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

RBC posted:

i dont think you know very much about the soviet system

Why's that?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2017 21:30

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:56

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Yeah, see, ignoring the obvious democratic problem with a one-party state it's also a super dumb way of running a country because the failures and mistakes of the government become the same as the failures and mistakes of the state, which undermines the legitimacy of the country itself.

And if you want to pull the whole tankie "Stalinist states totally have free elections" song and dance you're supposed to use China as your example. Weak performance smh.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2017 21:49

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