Are these mingy little beasts really the champions of the working class? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#15063033
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, this contention is a stereotyped cliche. *Personally* I happen to think that religion pertains more to *lifestyle* than to the society-generalized 'macro' realm, but religion can also be seen as socially-*controlling* and thus is 'politics' as well, for a full societal cross-section paradigm of social existence.




There isn't enough computing power on the planet to smoothly run a government run economy.
#15063035
Thai Traditionalist wrote:I find it curious that communism or socialism is the only political ideology that requires an interim period.


It's not just an interim period, what "socialism" seems to require is an actual alchemical transmutation. Alchemists try to transmute lead into gold and socialists try to transmute gulags into freedom. What these maniacs apparently don't get is that you can't lie your way to truth, or gulag your way to freedom, or murder your way to justice. Their failure to grasp this simple and obvious reality is what leads people like Orwell to suspect that socialists aren't actually interested in any of these ideals that they espouse and what they're really after is just power and control.
#15063040
late wrote:
There isn't enough computing power on the planet to smoothly run a government run economy.



You're indicating a 'blueprint'-type approach to economic modeling, in which all inputs and outputs would have to be linearly predetermined and locked-in before a single gear could turn.

And, politically, you're thinking of a Stalinist-type elitist state bureaucracy, which *isn't* the goal of socialism / communism.

Yes, something *like* this would probably be needed / used in the 'transitional' period of repressing and overthrowing bourgeois class rule, but my own position is that ultimately all decision-making could be sheerly bottom-up, on a per-item basis, as seen in that 'Emergent Central Planning' diagram.

The actual participating liberated laborers would be the ones to collectively decide what gets produced, or not, since it's their own labor power at stake, and human need (consumption) could be mass-subjectively determined with a daily individually-ranked 'demands' list, aggregated locally and/or over any combined geographic areas, by mutual consent.

Here's from my labor credits FAQ:



[A]ggregating these lists, by ranking (#1, #2, #3, etc.), is *no big deal* for any given computer.



-> What would the institution *look* like -- the one that aggregates these mass demands for the locality from individuals' daily demands?


Originally Posted by ckaihatsu

It's actually *not* an institution -- all it is is a computer-sorting function, that would then automatically publish the aggregated mass-prioritizations daily out to the public, as online, at certain locations on displays, and in newspapers, etc.

I've considered that, in the interests of no-institutions and full transparency, the hardware itself could even be replaced on a daily basis with *brand-new* hardware (a regular PC), and those who are so interested could participate in installing the Linux operating system (OS) onto the computer (in an open, public space), then installing the 'sorting' open-source software (compiled fresh from the source code), and putting that PC into service for just that one day. There could also be observers in-person, and live video feeds of this daily process broadcast out over the Internet, with cameras and video feeds remaining pointed at the machine itself over the course of the day so that people can see both in-person and remotely exactly what's going on with this automatic-centralized process of information aggregation and distribution.

The database used could be made up of these fields:


ISSUER

AUTOMATIC TIMESTAMP UPON RECEIPT (YYYYMMDDHHMM)

ACTIVE DATE (YYYYMMDD)

FORMAL-ITEM REFERENCED (OR AUTOMATICALLY CREATED), IF ANY

FORMAL-ITEM NUMERICAL INCREMENT, 001-999, PER DAY, PER UNIQUE GEOGRAPHIC UNIT

GEOGRAPHIC LEVEL INTENDED-FOR ('HSH', 'ENT', 'LCL', RGN', 'CTN', 'GBL')

GEOGRAPHIC SOURCE UNIQUE NAME, ABBREVIATED

FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME_BIRTHYEAR(YY)

INDIVIDUAL'S ITEM RANKING, 0001-9999 (PER DAY)

RANK-ITEM TYPE ('INI', 'DMN', 'PRP', 'PRJ', PDR', 'FND', 'DTI', 'LLI', 'PLP', 'ORD', 'REQ', 'SLD')

TITLE-DESCRIPTION


WORK ROLE NUMBER AND TITLE

TENTATIVE OR ACTUAL HAZARD / DIFFICULTY MULTIPLIER

ESTIMATE-OF OR ACTUAL LABOR HOURS PER SCHEDULED WORK SHIFT

TOTAL LABOR CREDITS (MULTIPLIER TIMES HOURS)

ACTUAL FUNDING OF LABOR CREDITS PER WORK SHIFT (FUNDING ITEM REFERENCE REQUIRED)

SCHEDULED DISCRETE WORK SHIFT, BEGINNING DATE & TIME

SCHEDULED DISCRETE WORK SHIFT, ENDING DATE & TIME

AVAILABLE-AND-SELECTED LIBERATED LABORER IDENTIFIER


DENOMINATION

QUANTITY, PER DENOMINATION

TOTAL LABOR CREDITS PER DENOMINATION

SERIAL NUMBER RANGE, BEGINNING

SERIAL NUMBER RANGE, ENDING



labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
Image



https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338
#15063088
ckaihatsu wrote:


And, politically, you're thinking of a Stalinist-type elitist state bureaucracy, which *isn't* the goal of socialism / communism.

Yes, something *like* this would probably be needed / used in the 'transitional' period of repressing and overthrowing bourgeois class rule, but my own position is that ultimately all decision-making could be sheerly bottom-up, on a per-item basis, as seen in that 'Emergent Central Planning' diagram.



You would get central planning.

And get stuck.

Not saying it's impossible, but I am saying it's prob a hundred or a thousand times more involved than you seem to think.

For all it's flaws, millions of decisions get made every day by everybody. That level of granularity can only be approximated, and I am not seeing a mechanism to replace institutions when they get corrupt.

Yes, we have a ton of corruption now. You need something better, and we have elections and bankruptcy and other ways to adapt to changing circumstance.
#15063097
Sivad wrote:It's not just an interim period, what "socialism" seems to require is an actual alchemical transmutation. Alchemists try to transmute lead into gold and socialists try to transmute gulags into freedom. What these maniacs apparently don't get is that you can't lie your way to truth, or gulag your way to freedom, or murder your way to justice. Their failure to grasp this simple and obvious reality is what leads people like Orwell to suspect that socialists aren't actually interested in any of these ideals that they espouse and what they're really after is just power and control.


Spot on. Another freaky thing about them is they have contrived a narrative that their "system" is an all or nothing deal; they say they have to have the whole world or it won't work. Well Stalin walked back from that a bit with his "socialism in one country" but the rest have this basically apocalyptic vision that all humanity has to be bought under their control or "it won't work". Monarchists, democrats, republicans, capitalists or whatever never think like that, they are pretty much happy to just have their little corner of humanity / earth. They might expand a bit if the opportunity arises but they none of them think they have to have every last inch of earth and every single human soul under the yoke to make their thing work.

The closest thing approaching that all or nothing borgism is again the two most apocalyptic religions Islam and Christianity but actually communists are even more extreme than them in the irrational lust for total world domination.
#15063154
Pants-of-dog wrote:
Are there any socialists anywhere that you think are not evil?


Plenty. Orwell was a socialist and he wasn't evil. I'm a socialist, I'm not evil. Most people who identify as socialists aren't actually socialists, they're nasty gulagists who have no commitment whatsoever to the fundamental principles that motivate real socialism. Real socialists are deeply committed to honesty, fairness, and respect for the rights of others. They don't tell crazy fucking lies to advance their agenda, they don't manipulate or bully people, and they certainly don't try to gulag the masses.
#15063157
"I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country."

"Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Do not imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the sovietic regime, or any other regime, and then suddenly return to honesty and reason. Once a whore, always a whore."

"a real Socialist is one who wishes – not merely conceives it as desirable, but actively wishes – to see tyranny overthrown."
#15063170
Sivad wrote:Plenty. Orwell was a socialist and he wasn't evil.


Did he do anything other than write books?

But I wonder why you are comfortable with him reporting people to the government while you condemn others for the same.

I'm a socialist, I'm not evil.


Not really. On a practical level, you are no different from the average Trump supporter.
#15063217
late wrote:
You would get central planning.

And get stuck.

Not saying it's impossible, but I am saying it's prob a hundred or a thousand times more involved than you seem to think.

For all it's flaws, millions of decisions get made every day by everybody. That level of granularity can only be approximated, and I am not seeing a mechanism to replace institutions when they get corrupt.

Yes, we have a ton of corruption now. You need something better, and we have elections and bankruptcy and other ways to adapt to changing circumstance.



Again, you're stuck / caught-up-in the 'blueprint' concept of centralized planning.

Centralized planning *could* simply be a proletarian-internal politics, to a final determining policy over usage, per-item, over a landscape of piles-of-stuff. (If any given pile-of-stuff became too depleted, for whatever reason, the workers in that locality would be the ones to kick in their labor for production to make the pile big again, a stock inventory approach.)

This kind of workers state would be a *vast* improvement since all politics would be internal to the working class only, with no private capitalist claims or interference over any of the same.

You're attempting to paint central proletarian planning as being *inherently* prone to corruption, but I'll remind that the initial Bolshevik Revolution was *invaded* by foreign Allied imperialist powers:



Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions which began in 1918. The stated goals were to help the Czechoslovak Legion, to secure supplies of munitions and armaments in Russian ports, and to re-establish the Eastern Front. Overthrow of the new Bolshevik regime was an additional, covert motivation.[7][8]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War



And:



Military

War communism was largely successful at its primary purpose of aiding the Red Army in halting the advance of the White Army and in reclaiming most of the territory of the former Russian Empire thereafter.

Social

In the cities and surrounding countryside, the population experienced hardships as a result of the war. Peasants refused to co-operate in producing food. Workers began migrating from the cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed themselves were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of barter of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd lost 70% of its population, while Moscow lost over 50%.[8]

A series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions broke out all over the country, such as the Tambov rebellion (1920–1921). A turning point came with the Kronstadt rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base in early March 1921. The rebellion startled Lenin, because Bolsheviks considered Kronstadt sailors the "reddest of the reds". According to David Christian, the Cheka (the state Communist Party secret police) reported 118 peasant uprisings in February 1921.[9]

Christian, in his book "Imperial and Soviet Russia", summarises the state of Russia in 1921 after years of War communism:

A government claiming to represent the people now found itself on the verge of being overthrown by that same working class. The crisis had undermined the loyalty of the villages, the towns and finally sections of the army. It was fully as serious as the crises faced by the tsarist government in 1905 and February 1917.[10]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_communism



---


Plus, your "concern" over revolutionary workers state centralized planning is opportunistic -- there *is* historical precedent for successful anti-imperialist nationalist liberation, namely 20th century Russia and China:



Material balance planning

Material balances are a method of economic planning where material supplies are accounted for in natural units (as opposed to using monetary accounting) and used to balance the supply of available inputs with targeted outputs. Material balancing involves taking a survey of the available inputs and raw materials in an economy and then using a balance sheet to balance the inputs with output targets specified by industry to achieve a balance between supply and demand. This balance is used to formulate a plan for resource allocation and investment in a national economy.[1]

The method of material balances is contrasted with the method of input-output planning developed by Wassily Leontief.


Role in Soviet-type planning

Further information: Soviet-type economic planning

Material balance planning was the principal tool of planning employed by Soviet-type planned economies and was Gosplan's major function in the Soviet Union. This system emerged in a haphazard manner during the collectivisation drive under Joseph Stalin's leadership. It prioritized rapid growth and industrialization over efficiency. Although material balances became an established part of Soviet planning, it never completely replaced the role of financial calculation in the economy.[2]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_balance_planning
#15063220
SolarCross wrote:
Spot on. Another freaky thing about them is they have contrived a narrative that their "system" is an all or nothing deal; they say they have to have the whole world or it won't work. Well Stalin walked back from that a bit with his "socialism in one country" but the rest have this basically apocalyptic vision that all humanity has to be bought under their control or "it won't work". Monarchists, democrats, republicans, capitalists or whatever never think like that, they are pretty much happy to just have their little corner of humanity / earth. They might expand a bit if the opportunity arises but they none of them think they have to have every last inch of earth and every single human soul under the yoke to make their thing work.

The closest thing approaching that all or nothing borgism is again the two most apocalyptic religions Islam and Christianity but actually communists are even more extreme than them in the irrational lust for total world domination.



Your cartoonish medieval mischaracterizations aside, the *point* of a proletarian revolution is for the *workers* to be in collective control of society's production processes, while geo-marginalized "socialist" states are *not* proletarian control over social production, by definition.

The 'world domination' part can only be the workers global collective control over the means of mass industrial production, so as to permanently displace present-day *bourgeois* (capitalist) control over the same. Once done -- however skeptical you may be -- the world would then be open for everyone to self-organize, collectively, without private claims, without a workers state / vanguard, and without the cost of profit-making -- as seen in my 'Emergent Central Planning' illustration.
#15063221
Sivad wrote:Plenty. Orwell was a socialist and he wasn't evil. I'm a socialist, I'm not evil. Most people who identify as socialists aren't actually socialists, they're nasty gulagists who have no commitment whatsoever to the fundamental principles that motivate real socialism. Real socialists are deeply committed to honesty, fairness, and respect for the rights of others. They don't tell crazy fucking lies to advance their agenda, they don't manipulate or bully people, and they certainly don't try to gulag the masses.


"most", there is a big problem right there. I am not sure how tenable it is to maintain that socialism is something different to what "most" socialists think it is... Maybe you should call yourself something else? Humanitarian? Democrat (I do not mean the US party but the general term)? "Socialism" at this point may be irretrievably tainted by what "most" socialists are like.
#15063223
Sivad wrote:
"I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country."

"Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Do not imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the sovietic regime, or any other regime, and then suddenly return to honesty and reason. Once a whore, always a whore."

"a real Socialist is one who wishes – not merely conceives it as desirable, but actively wishes – to see tyranny overthrown."



Your dramatics notwithstanding, here's the *crux* of what all the fuss is about:



Workers' councils

According to the official historiography of the Soviet Union, the first workers' council (soviet) formed in May 1905 in Ivanovo (north-east of Moscow) during the 1905 Russian Revolution (Ivanovsky Soviet). However, in his memoirs, the Russian Anarchist Volin claims that he witnessed the beginnings of the St Petersburg Soviet in January 1905. The Russian workers were largely organized at the turn of the 20th century, leading to a government-sponsored trade-union leadership.

In 1905, as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) increased the strain on Russian industrial production, the workers began to strike and rebel. The soviets represented an autonomous workers' movement, one that broke free from the government's oversight of workers' unions. Soviets sprang up throughout the industrial centers of Russia, usually organizing meetings at the factory level. These soviets disappeared after the revolution of 1905, but re-emerged under socialist leadership during the revolutions of 1917.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_(council)



Socialism-in-one-country isn't sufficient, because the main divide in society worldwide is that of *class*.

Historically Stalinism (socialism-in-one-country) was arguably a geopolitically *defensive* move, since the nascent Bolshevik Revolution was invaded by Western imperialist military forces.
#15063240
ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, you're stuck / caught-up-in the 'blueprint' concept of centralized planning.



The last bit, about Stalin and Mao being successful... Every organisation is going to run into problems. The question is how fast it happens and what tools you have to deal with it. If you look at food production, the problems were severe in Russia, and devastating in China.

Problems with central planning multiply, and lead to inappropriate economic signals. In addition, they were simple economies. As the Russian economy developed in ran into a bunch of problems.

Were you the guy I asked about whether a Carbon Tax would be a negative externality? IOW, Pigovian.

I didn't say this was impossible, so I am not the one who is stuck. You're stuck, because you don't want to acknowledge the fact that this would be tougher than you think..
#15063241
[insult by SolarCross deleted - Prosthetic Conscience]

I'll appreciate it if you immediately cease your childish name-calling.

The main divide in society *is* class, because modern society worldwide produces its materials through the process of *commodity production*, meaning that both productive-labor and its resulting goods and services are measured economically in terms of *exchange values*, as commodities -- roughly defined in practice as 'prices'.



In Karl Marx's critique of political economy and subsequent Marxian analyses, the capitalist mode of production refers to the systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies. Private money-making in various forms (renting, banking, merchant trade, production for profit and so on) preceded the development of the capitalist mode of production as such. The capitalist mode of production proper, based on wage-labour and private ownership of the means of production and on industrial technology, began to grow rapidly in Western Europe from the Industrial Revolution, later extending to most of the world.[1]

The capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation, wage-based labour and—at least as far as commodities are concerned—being market-based.[2]



Synopsis

A "mode of production" (German: Produktionsweise) means simply "the distinctive way of producing", which could be defined in terms of how it is socially organized and what kinds of technologies and tools are used. Under the capitalist mode of production:

• Both the inputs and outputs of production are mainly privately owned, priced goods and services purchased in the market.

• Production is carried out for exchange and circulation in the market, aiming to obtain a net profit income from it.

• The owners of the means of production (capitalists) are the dominant class (bourgeoisie) who derive their income from the surplus product produced by the workers and appropriated freely by the capitalists.

• A defining feature of capitalism is the dependency on wage-labor for a large segment of the population; specifically, the working class (proletariat) do not own capital and must live by selling their labour power in exchange for a wage.

The capitalist mode of production may exist within societies with differing political systems (e.g. liberal democracy, social democracy, fascism, Communist state and Czarism) and alongside different social structures such as tribalism, the caste system, an agrarian-based peasant society, urban industrial society and post-industrialism. Although capitalism has existed in the form of merchant activity, banking, renting land and small-scale manufactures in previous stages of history, it was usually a relatively minor activity and secondary to the dominant forms of social organization and production with the prevailing property system keeping commerce within clear limits.[3]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalis ... ist_theory)



---


So those who own capital are not obligated to work for a wage for the means of life and living, while those who do *not* own capital -- the working class -- *are* obliged to work for a necessarily-economically-exploitative wage in order to secure the necessities of life and living. This is the class divide, for commodity production, worldwide, without exception.
#15063243
ckaihatsu wrote:Historically Stalinism (socialism-in-one-country) was arguably a geopolitically *defensive* move, since the nascent Bolshevik Revolution was invaded by Western imperialist military forces.

:lol: You're having a laugh, imperialist invasions? :roll: Lenin crossed German territory to get to Russia because he was working to defeat Russia. That's why the German high command stuffed his pockets with gold in order to buy a second revolution. And Lenin repaid his German employers handsomely at Brest Litosk. Germany could have swept away the Bolshevik regime if they wanted to, but they chose to keep the Bolsheviks in power. The foreign forces that supported the Whites were paltry in comparison to the Heer. Some of these forces didn't even fully support the Whites.

The foreign force that did the most damage to the Bolshevik position were the Czech legion. Were these imperialist invaders hell bent on restoring White rule at any cost, as per the pathetic fantasy world of the left. No the reason they rose up against the Bureaucratic incompetence and high handed authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks is because they were trying to escape from Russia not invade it.
Last edited by Rich on 01 Feb 2020 14:32, edited 1 time in total.
#15063247
SolarCross wrote:
I do not care at all what you would appreaciate. Fact is nothing you have ever posted here has ever been even remotely reflected by actual reality; it has been 100% purest delusion. At that point it is basically impossible to avoid mentioning that you clearly are a lunatic.



He is proposing reform, which by definition cannot be reality since it hasn't happened.

It's also rational, if incomplete. If someone could come up with a method that would work, it would make a lot of sense.

I entertain some doubts about it being possible, but I will try to refrain from writing fiction about it.
#15063249
late wrote:He is proposing reform, which by definition cannot be reality since it hasn't happened.

It's also rational, if incomplete. If someone could come up with a method that would work, it would make a lot of sense.

I entertain some doubts about it being possible, but I will try to refrain from writing fiction about it.


He is acting out his mental illness, that is all.
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