Truth To Power wrote: "With confidence waning in whether modern private capitalism can truly be fixed, the debate shifts to a choice between two systemic alternatives that we must learn to keep straight: state capitalism and socialism."
Two errors here: "state capitalism" is an oxymoron, as capitalism is defined as private ownership of the means of production; and a blatant false dichotomy fallacy.
Davea8 wrote:Ok, so you're stuck on dictionary definitions
Because I value accurate and honest communication.
and don't recognize culturally and historically inflicted variations on the theme of capitalism.
Huh?? What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about?
For you, it has to be "by the book" or it doesn't exist.
I just like to know what I am talking about. You don't. Fine.
That leaves you out of the conversation from the outset.
I don't have the time, energy, or patience for a "conversation" that consists of deliberately misusing words for propaganda purposes.
Capitalism and socialism are both based on the same false assumption: that there is no crucial difference between land and capital.
There you have it again. You don't see connections between events and the contexts in which they are applied.
No, I am the one here who DOES see them, because I am the one who understands that definitions determine what you can talk about, and inaccurate definitions mean you can't talk about the actual issues.
"State capitalism exists when the state apparatus - rather than a group of private citizens - positions state officials to function as capitalist employers. Thus, under state capitalism it is state officials placed in charge of enterprises who hire employees, organize and supervise their activities within enterprises, sell the resulting outputs (goods or services), receive the sales revenues and thus realize any profits. State officials occupy the key directorial positions within such state capitalist enterprises."
This is just a dishonest way of blaming capitalism for the evils and failures of socialism by calling socialism, "state capitalism." It's just a stupid lie.
Either you fail to grasp what socialism is, or you are intentionally trying to mislead and confuse.
Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production (land and capital), as any good dictionary would inform you, if you were willing to be informed.
Socialism is a relationship between the employer and the employed which is fundamentally different from that of capitalism.
Socialism is not a relationship between employer and employed, but of land and capital to their owners.
In socialism, employer and employed are one and the same.
So, universal self-employment.
If that is not the prevailing condition, you aren't looking at socialism.
You aren't looking at socialism if that IS the prevailing condition.
And state capitalism, which Marx and Engels warned against, is not socialism.
Because it is an oxymoron.
Try again.
Why? I won the first time.
"An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction between employers and employees within it has been abolished."
So only self-employment counts as "socialist." What nonsense.
You may be the expert here but I think readers can figure this out easily enough.
Suppose you explain it. Because I'm not seeing what else it could mean.
"So long as employers, private or state, hire laborers to produce commodities and generate profits that the employers exclusively receive, the economy has a capitalist structure. So long as it is exclusively the employers (whether private, state or hybrid; whether more or less regulated) who decide how to use those profits, it is a capitalist structure."
Employees already get, and decide how to use, their rightful share of the profits of production: their wages. All wages in excess of the amount the employee could obtain without using any capital provided by an employer are profits of the enterprise's production distributed to employees.
Labor costs are a cost of doing business and accounted for prior to calculating profits.
So, you are saying that in addition to the wages they earn by their labor, employees in a socialist economy also get the
profits that the
employer earns by providing the capital equipment??
Thank you for confirming that it is just as I said: socialists pretend capital is land to justify stealing capital.
You are echoing the capitalist's calculation that reduction of labor costs can result in an increase in profits.
Which is certainly true.
That's why 60,000 companies have left the U.S. and moved overseas. You are merely asserting the capitalist's position.
You mean, identifying the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality? Guilty.
"An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction between employers and employees within it has been abolished."
So only self-employment is socialist.
You already tried that one.
And it's still true.
"When workers collectively and democratically produce, receive and distribute the profits their labor generates, the enterprise becomes socialist."
What about the profits the capital contributed by the employer generates -- i.e., the difference between actual production and the amount the same workers would produce with the same time and effort, but without the capital contribution of the employer?
That Wolff quote is obviously about socialism. Your question is obviously about capitalism. You're trying to mix the two.
No. Wolff is just smuggling in a claim that labor generates profits. It doesn't. Labor earns its wages. It is the provision of capital by the employer that generates profits, by increasing the productivity of labor beyond its cost. Which is why the provider of the capital gets the profits he generates, and not the laborer, who doesn't generate them.
The rest of Wolff's article is mostly delusional speculation, and not worth readers' attention.
Then you wouldn't be interested in discussing them.
Correct.
The remainder of your own comments were embarrassing cases of posturing and self-promotion.
<yawn>
You're clearly pro-capitalist,
I'm clearly anti-capitalist. You just have no space in your socialist brain for the possibility that someone can be both anti-capitalist and anti-socialist because he understands that capitalism and socialism are both false and and evil (though of the two, socialism's track record seems to be distinctly worse).
which means your views on socialism would not be expected to be objective or useful to anyone but another capitalist.
Blatant false dichotomy fallacy. My views on socialism are
more objective and therefore more accurate and useful than the absurd, delusional speculations put about by ninnies like Wolff.