|
Is Communism good? This poll is closed. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Yes |
|
375 | 66.25% |
| No |
|
191 | 33.75% |
| Total: | 523 votes | ||
|
OwlFancier posted:Very good. Capitalism just externalizes all of its negatives so it looks better if you don't count those. No, communism doesn't solve third world poverty.
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2017 05:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 08:08 |
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I don't think you understand. This is marxist psudoreligion, not reality. Haven't we gone over this before? OwlFancier posted:Depends how you define "single entity" really. If control of the "single entity" is properly distributed among everyone then that is surely preferable to the current approach, where the bulk of the power is concentrated into a few people who are rich enough to own everything. The argument against capitalism is that democracy is bad. Specifically that's its unable to check the power of capitalists. And the communist solution is to take power from guys called capitalist and give it all to a smaller group of guys called bureaucrats. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 24, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 02:25
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:No idea but it's patently correct, captialism exists to extract wealth from the labour of others and concentrate it, this is inherently unsustainable unless you have infinite space to grow into because eventually all the wealth will be concentrated and the system will collapse. Or that doesn't happen and the system continues. I will assume for now that you're one of those marxists that doesn't understand what profit means. Hint: socialist economies have it too.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 02:35
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Profit can be defined several ways but for, say, nationalized rail, the profits would be invested back into proviidng the rail service because the point of the industry is to provide the service. Christ. Profit is a label for money which is no different than "tax", "fee", "tariff" or "wage". It's no more "extracted" or unsustainable than any of those other labels for money which all come from and get spent in the economy
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 03:33
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted: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. This was of course never guaranteed but seems even more dated as we watch populist movements lead the dismantling.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 02:31
|
|
|
Lol after "Das Kapital".
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2017 03:48
|
|
|
Socialism just changes the someone else. Let's not pretend large democratic institutes are particularly empowering And we're already in one.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 01:12
|
|
|
I don't and think the same of Marxists who don't think democracy can stand up against capitalist power. If it can't dreams of democratic communism are certainly hosed.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 01:25
|
|
|
Bob le Moche posted:democracy standing up to capitalist power is what we marxists call "the revolution" No it's not and it's something communism needs to figure out. The problem isn't hypothetical, communisms biggest failure was its complete inability to hold the elite in check with the result that the population had zero real control over the means of production. Far less than a first world capitalist citizen with a responsive consumer market and functioning democracy.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 02:02
|
|
|
TomViolence posted:Didn't I mention earlier that under capitalism 3.5 billion people worldwide are collectively poorer than the richest 8 people? First world communism doesn't do jack poo poo for the third world except probably cut off trade (they call it exploitation) and gently caress them more. Buddy it's not just a coincidence that handing all the power in the economy to a central organization causes problems. Like I said, if democracy can't contain decentralized capitalists competing against each other it won't contain communists who centrally control the entire economy and media.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 02:31
|
|
|
Bob le Moche posted:Recent studies estimate that 16.3 trillion dollars of value have been sucked out of poor countries by the first world since 1980. (http://www.gfintegrity.org/reports/) The first world also regularly bombs the rest of the world to maintain capitalist control over resources in third world regions. Yes, the third world would benefit from this coming to an end. The study is wrong. Hence China. Monsanto and Exxon are under democratic control and market control while competing with Dow and BP.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 02:56
|
|
|
Tesseraction posted:Toilet paper is democratically controlled because I say so. Though not as regulated by the state as either Monsanto or Exxon.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 03:00
|
|
|
Tesseraction posted:That is not democratic control in any understanding of 'democratic' or 'control' in the English language. But roughly as democratic as the communist toilet paper factory 31 layers removed from the elected central planning board (that also controls the media) but probably better because there is a market.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 03:29
|
|
|
It comes down to the fact that capital power and money power are not special types of power. Concentrated power is a threat in all forms. Something perfectly exemplified by the failures of real life socialist experiments.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2017 18:00
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted: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. 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. 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. No surprise real life socialists states deleted the capitalists then faced huge problems of concentrated political power. Fiction posted:The like ten CEOs who own a huge portion of global capital cannot, in fact, be swayed or affected in any meaningful way by peaceful protest, and we are completely beholden to them in terms of the global power structure. In real life the CEO is checked by government regulations, competitors, the labor market and customers. In communism we take the same guy with the same powers (or more), bury him in the national economic bureaucracy and pretend his power is magically contained.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2017 15:21
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted: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. 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.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2017 15:55
|
|
|
The Kingfish posted:Ownership is not a legal technicality. The average US car is 3X the average global yearly income and if you have one that's economic power in it's most basic and obvious form. There is a piece of paper somewhere in N Korea which says everyone owns the means of production. It's a worthless technicality and likewise the Soviet Union was another great example of a population that had no meaningful control over the means of production which were actually controlled by an unaccountable party elite.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 02:59
|
|
|
White Rock posted:The factory boss who earns a wage is different from the capitalist who earns a living on the growth of company. It's not about class vs self interest. The shoe company that profits X dollars this year and X dollars next year doesn't collapse. It makes X dollars. The Kingfish posted:No. Economic power in its most basic and obvious form is the ability to turn other people's wages into profits. It's consumption. It's consuming other people's labor. The label profit is ultimately as significant as other labels for money like 'fee' or 'tax' - not significant. What ultimately matters is who gets what portion of the economic pie - not the label for it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 03:16
|
|
|
The Kingfish posted:Why couldn't a system of communism exist based around some sort constitutionally democratic system with functional checks and balances? That's what I'm interested in achieving. The market is half the check on economic power. If Subaru hadn't made a car I liked I would have bought a Honda. Hence in real life the owners/managers of both spend a ton of time trying to make a product I want. The irony to me is that communists are sure the current democratic system is corrupted by the current economic elite but thinks the solution is to remove half the checks while concentrating economic power further while ignoring that when this was done in the past it ended up as bad as that sounds in exactly the ways you'd expect. The Kingfish posted:Explain to me how profits are the same as fees and taxes. Profit is the label we give to money that goes to capitalists. It's money. It gets paid to humans. It may or may not be 'deserved' in an abstract or economic sense. The humans spend it or save it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 03:34
|
|
|
TomViolence posted:Quite simply, as things stand corporations are only answerable to their shareholders. Except not at all. Walmart's shareholds could order stores painted pink and stocked with nothing but Anime which is power, but they'd be out of business in a year after customers stopped shopping there. That's power too. Smudgie is exactly right that you can't actually deal with the problems communists want to solve without centralizing power. Competing cooperatives for example ultimately still have profit motive and do nothing to address inequalities or exploitation of others. So power is going to be moved and centralized - not eliminated. The question is whether its new location is well checked against abuse and when the starting point is to remove (or weaken) half the checks that currently exist and centralize that power under a state which is supposedly already corrupted by it it's not an easy case to make. Of course you'd also have to recognize that's what's happening and not pretend capitalist power is unique.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 16:15
|
|
|
Whether democracy alone (after removing many of the checks represented by the market) can contain economic power is a general question which starts by recognizing that capitalists don't hold a super special form of power. The people high up in the state bureaucracy end up with the same level of immediate control over the means of production. Personally because I don't think democracy has already collapsed under pressure from economic power I'm more optimistic about democracy as a check against power than the average communist. Though I think history gives ample reason to worry about what happens when most or all power is moved under the state.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 17:28
|
|
|
Besides just saying lol I've been wanting a reminder as to why, for example, democracy didn't end in say the robber barron era or at any other time in the past 200+ year history of democracy coexisting with private ownership of the means of production if such a thing is impossible.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2017 17:39
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:A shepherd that would starve its flock would also starve himself. Does it mean the sheep have power over him? Sheep are pretty dumb but, say, my 1 year old daughter exerts huge amounts of power over me with nothing other than pointing and crying. It's not law but getting people to pay attention to you and do things you want (that they don't want to do) is as real as power gets. So what did you think you were getting at? And this need not be abstract when we can glance at the history of the Soviet consumer economy to see what it looks like when average people don't actually have meaningful control over the means of production (it means stuff they want isn't produced for them).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2017 04:31
|
|
|
Really ancons? I missed that detail. I tend to hold marxists in just slightly higher esteem than libertarians specifically because the existence of a state makes their theories potentially possible. lol with no state.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2017 14:13
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:There's a difference between being the, well, vanguard of an internationally popular movement and being in direct conflict with the biggest economic powers on the planet. Democracy was most certainly an ideological threat to the monarchy.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2017 14:58
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Rich people own stuff and use that to get money out of people who don't own stuff, madness... Communism had different words but the same thing and it was worse. Capital isn't the all important distinction. Power matters, wealth matters and it's no accident that by pretending capital is the root of all evil socialists societies have ended up with rampant problems of other forms of power.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2017 02:30
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I don't actually think anyone seriously disagrees with Marx's analysis of Capital, they just don't like the implications. I've never actually seen someone try to suggest that ownership doesn't allow the owner to control those who do not own things in exchange for money. And lol that you still don't get why you get compared to goldbug idiots or whatever on the opposite end of the spectrum. The thing that makes you and them dumb isn't that you're wrong about everything, it's that you essentially latch onto a single thing that's right (the fed really can/does x/y/z) and sooth your troubled mind to to sleep at night by believing in a simplistic fantasy where everything good and bad revolves around that single thing. Capital is not important to the exclusion of everything else (like every other form of power).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2017 03:12
|
|
|
TomViolence posted:Relationship to capital and the means of production is literally one's relationship to what makes life viable and liveable. If I can't eat because I can't get a job or I'm not payed enough, my life is on the line and that's solely due to my relationship to capital, which is the basis of all power relations in human society. Yes but if you want a better example of having no power over capital look to the soviets who did a fantastic job preventing the average person from effectively controlling it. Citizens of social democracy have multiple forms of control including states which already tax and distribute between about 30-50% it. Ownership exists. It's not the only form of power and other forms of power can be worse.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2017 03:36
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Claims of a 'religion following' is also nothing but ideological propaganda. Even in it's heyday, marx was treated as a major scientific figure of the marxist theory, not a prophet. Saying that marxism is 'religious' is based on absolutely nothing, and the only reason the accusation is leveled is pure ideology. It's 2017, not 1894. The debates are over and the case is closed. You can be a religious fanatic about anything but the glove really fits when it's an ideology based around a guy who said a bunch of weird psudo-mystical poo poo two centuries ago. You can use more modern economic frameworks (or data) to say almost anything - there is no reason to self-identify with Marx unless you're deliberately trying to drape yourself in that weird flag. Panzeh posted:The entire liberal notion of checks and balances makes no sense in advanced capitalism because accumulations of capital tend to result in entities powerful enough to steer whatever divided power they need to their ends. Who cares about the senate and house when you can literally buy both. Or that doesn't happen. Real life will tell.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 01:10
|
|
|
rudatron posted:The debate isn't over, and contemporary economists like Piketty are essentially having to rediscover Marx. I'll agree it's never a good idea to idealize people, but ideas can stick, and the idea that capitalism itself produces inequality, rather than merely being subject to it, matches what we have in the real world. The fantasy of capitalism as a pure meritocracy is nothing but self-serving bullshit. What does marx mean to you because Picketty completely contradicts him. Picketty is exactly what I meant when I said modern frameworks and data can be used to say anything. Picketty says profit is going up and can be fixed with taxes. Marx says profit must inevitably fall and bring down the system because: human nature. Even if we assumed they both say capitalism is doomed (they don't) you don't get credit in science for the what. You get credit for how and why which is why evolution is Darwin and not credited to the dozens of others who had theories of evolution. Marx said weird and specific poo poo. The only reason to stuff other observed capitalist problem like Picketty into the marx bucket is ideology or ignorance.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 14:13
|
|
|
Weird BIAS posted:Wow that sounds like nothing of the Marx I read. Can you source where he says that or a commentator who drew those conclusions? 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. Same thing for alienation and the belief that changing our relationship to the means of production in a very specific (legal) way necesarily fixes things. Even a small change to the underlying model of human behavior upends all that.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 18:48
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted: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. 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.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 19:15
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:No, it takes assumption about the system. Individual capitalists can give up the cycle, but in the aggregate they will be replaced by others because the mechanics of the system promote actors following one pattern of behavior to positions of power. What if they don't for cultural reasons? What if they're constrained by regulations (note: a logical behavior by the voting masses).
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 19:28
|
|
|
Brainiac Five posted:I'm not sure how Marxian economics being fringe in a capitalist society is meant to prove their objective irrelevance, unless economists have deluded themselves into thinking they're genuinely objective thinkers. It's a famous critique of capitalism. If it was good it would highly useful not just to academics but to capitalist themselves. steinrokkan posted:No, it takes assumption about the system. Individual capitalists can give up the cycle, but in the aggregate they will be replaced by others because the mechanics of the system promote actors following one pattern of behavior to positions of power. Why are you sure capitalists won't collude to prevent catastrophe? Or that democratic checks on power can't hold it balance.The only way to be sure that capitalism leads to marxist collapse under every scenario in any culture is if that specific behavior is baked into human nature.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 03:49
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted: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. Of course this reads like an idiot right winger explaining away mainstream media facts but besides that it's transparently wrong. This is economics and the way to make money is to be right. If a modern Marxist research could predict or solve anything it would make money. Especially since all the other sheep are following the mainstream.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 12:29
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I don't really think it matters much to me whether there's a king or not, I still have gently caress all say in how I live because that's determined by how much money I'm allowed to keep and whether I'm allowed to work. In every conceivable society other people are going to have control over you, your life and your livelihood. How much control they have depends on 1000 real life variables and not whether their title is comrad or capitalist. The local pizza shop owner doesn't actually hold the power of life and death over anyone.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 20:20
|
|
|
Fiction posted:There is enough food, water, and housing for everyone in the world, actually. Capitalism manufactures scarcity by design where there really is none. Socialism is hardly more irrelevant than when talking about global poverty. If first world leftists got their nationalist revolutions the rest of the world would be hosed and expected to say thank you for the end of "exploitation".
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 20:52
|
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:Good communists are also internationalists Nationalist revolution is 100X more likely than global revolution and nationalism of all kinds is terrible but first world leftist nationalism is the worst case worst case scenario for the global poor.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2017 21:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 08:08 |
|
|
caps on caps on caps posted:It's research with the conclusion in mind. That's the heart of it. It's not science and it can't be science. It's not right and it can't be right because it's not a legitimate framework for discovery to begin with.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2017 23:34
|
|