No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there. Rentierism is sucking us dry. - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14988005
Rancid wrote:@Steve_American, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MMT requires that tax rates be very fluid? Basically, to control inflation taxes need to go up, and then once inflation subsides, it tax rates can go down?

Fluid? Yes.
Very fluid? I don't think so.
You see MMT says that taxes are *not* mostly to raise money. They are to avoid inflation and to do other socially desirable things. Like my top rates are there to put a ceiling on wealth and income. For me avoiding vast wealth is a socially desirable goal. Big wealth is bad but OK. Vast wealth is just all around bad.
I believe that it hurts the economy for the rentiers to take too much from the working class because they would spend it and rentiers would hoard it.
#14988072
Steve_American wrote:
Thanks for joining the conversation.
On the question of the value of a dollar. Isn't it set by the market and/or by the Gov. setting a minimum wage?



Since the dollar, and other currencies, set the underlying valuations for all other financial instruments, the point here is that there's too much *chaos* within the exchange-value valuation itself.

There could be a round of *speculation* over various new, popular commodities, driving up prices, and requiring more sums of currency to be directed there to those particular commodities. The change means that the value of the underlying dollar would be fluctuating *constantly*, moment-to-moment, and day-to-day.

What *you're* referring to is 'money supply', which also has an effect on the underlying valuations, but far less so than actual transactional activity in the economy as a whole.

Also:



The paradox of value (also known as the diamond–water paradox) is the apparent contradiction that, although water is on the whole more useful, in terms of survival, than diamonds, diamonds command a higher price in the market. The philosopher Adam Smith is often considered to be the classic presenter of this paradox, although it had already appeared as early as Plato's Euthydemus.[1] Nicolaus Copernicus,[2] John Locke, John Law[3] and others had previously tried to explain the disparity.



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



---


Steve_American wrote:
I don't get what you mean by social necessity or by 'plain' necessary. I suppose someone needs to own the land. Is that what you mean?



I mean 'social necessity' in terms of *organic* demand -- what people would take into their possession, for their own personal consumption, if there were no barriers to doing so immediately.

Here's a formal definition:



What is "socially necessary"?

Marx argues in Capital:

Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor spent on it, the more idle and un-skillful the laborer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labor, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labor, expenditure of one uniform labor power. The total labor power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labor power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units...The labor time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.[7]


Thus, according to Marx any labor power squandered during the production of a commodity, i.e. labor that is socially unnecessary, does not add value as value is determined by the average social labor.

Robert Nozick has criticised the qualifier "socially necessary" in the labor theory of value as not well-defined and concealing a subjective judgement of necessity.[8] For example, Nozick posits a laborer who spends his time tying knots in a piece of cord. The laborer does his job as efficiently as is humanly possible, but Marx would likely agree that simply tying knots in cords is not a socially necessary use of labor. The problem is that what is "socially necessary" depends entirely on whether or not there is demand for the finished product, i.e., the knotted cord. In this way, introducing the "socially necessary" qualifier into the labor theory of value simply converts the theory into a roundabout and imprecise description of supply and demand.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism ... cessary%22?



---


Steve_American wrote:
I would suggest a progressive tax structure that is exponential. That is, it goes way, way up for the over half a billion $$ in net worth crowd. And the corresponding incomes are to be heavily [90%] taxed too. In fact I would have a very high net worth tax at the start to take away the wealth that the rentiers have accumulated over the last 3 decades. I'm not sure how high it needs to be but maybe 20% for 3 years and then reduce it to 7%.
And all income needs to be taxed at the same rate with Capital gains indexed for inflation. [But, not for risk.]
I have suggested that the Constitution limit the number of allowed deductions. This would simplify taxes a lot, and end all the exemptions for this and that. Maybe 5 is enough. One would be expenses for corps., but what is an expense? Why can the CEO get a free car but his workers can't deduct the cost of their cars?



Well, it's good to hear of your relatively-progressive reformist approach in addressing income-inequality, but since I'm a revolutionary, I'll posit that reformism, as for progressive taxation, just isn't enough. I think we have the Great Depression as a precedent -- without meaningful investment opportunities in the real economy the rich simply looked / look to appropriating *public money* for their coffers:



During the presidencies of Harding and Coolidge in the twenties, the Secretary of the Treasury was Andrew Mellon, one of the richest men in America. In 1923, Congress was presented with the "Mellon Plan," calling for what looked like a general reduction of income taxes, except that the top income brackets would have their tax rates lowered from 50 percent to 25 percent, while the lowest-income group would have theirs lowered from 4 percent to 3 percent.



https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon ... hel15.html



And:



The stock market crash of 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression of the United States, came directly from wild speculation which collapsed and brought the whole economy down with it. But, as John Galbraith says in his study of that event (The Great Crash), behind that speculation was the fact that "the economy was fundamentally unsound." He points to very unhealthy corporate and banking structures, an unsound foreign trade, much economic misinformation, and the "bad distribution of income" (the highest 5 percent of the population received about one-third of all personal income).

A socialist critic would go further and say that the capitalist system was by its nature unsound: a system driven by the one overriding motive of corporate profit and therefore unstable, unpredictable, and blind to human needs. The result of all that: permanent depression for many of its people, and periodic crises for almost everybody. Capitalism, despite its attempts at self-reform, its organization for better control, was still in 1929 a sick and undependable system.

After the crash, the economy was stunned, barely moving. Over five thousand banks closed and huge numbers of businesses, unable to get money, closed too. Those that continued laid off employees and cut the wages of those who remained, again and again. Industrial production fell by 50 percent, and by 1933 perhaps 15 million (no one knew exactly)- one-fourth or one-third of the labor force-were out of work. The Ford Motor Company, which in the spring of 1929 had employed 128,000 workers, was down to 37,000 by August of 1931. By the end of 1930, almost half the 280,000 textile mill workers in New England were out of work. Former President Calvin Coolidge commented with his customary wisdom: "When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results." He spoke again in early 1931, "This country is not in good condition."

Clearly those responsible for organizing the economy did not know what had happened, were baffled by it, refused to recognize it, and found reasons other than the failure of the system. Herbert Hoover had said, not long before the crash: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land." Henry Ford, in March 1931, said the crisis was here because "the average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it." A few weeks later he laid off 75,000 workers.

There were millions of tons of food around, but it was not profitable to transport it, to sell it. Warehouses were full of clothing, but people could not afford it. There were lots of houses, but they stayed empty because people couldn't pay the rent, had been evicted, and now lived in shacks in quickly formed "Hoovervilles" built on garbage dumps.
#14988446
@ckaihatsu,
Thanks agin for joining the conversation.
However, I don''t understand most of what you wrote enough to even reply to it.
For example, you thoughts on social necessity wandered into discussing the labor definition of value.
What has 'value' have to do with 'necessity'?
Diamonds are more valuable than water because water is all over the place and diamonds are pretty rare. And, the cartel holds most diamonds off the market to keep their price even higher. Soon when fresh drinkable water gets rare you will see people using diamonds to buy water.
We seem to be talking past each other. At least I can't see how to respond to you better.
Please try again.
#14988558
ckaihatsu wrote:'Instinctive selves' -- ?

This is implicitly a 'human nature'-type argument, which is inherently a non-starter since humanity is infinitely self-malleable.

At what point, nearing our extinction, do we start to understand the limits to human malleability? That it is, in fact, not infinite unless we're willing to tolerate our own extinction?

Or have we also been rendered fatally stupid (ie. willing to tolerate our own extinction) as part of the infinite-malleability process - the free-for-all of social engineering that has been lead by technology-commerce?
#14988659
Steve_American wrote:
@ckaihatsu,
Thanks agin for joining the conversation.
However, I don''t understand most of what you wrote enough to even reply to it.
For example, you thoughts on social necessity wandered into discussing the labor definition of value.
What has 'value' have to do with 'necessity'?



I mean to *juxtapose* those two concepts, to show their differing, *incompatible* respective scales of measurement.

Many in the world -- billions -- are forced due to personal biological necessity to continually concern themselves with obtaining the basic material necessities for life and living. But the world has the *capacity* to provide for *everyone*, so that no one would ever have to be concerned or worried about these basic essentials (food, shelter, etc.). *That's* 'social necessity' -- any person's own individual common needs, within a larger social context.

This concept of social necessity is inherently out-of-sync with any concept of '[exchange] value', and may even be diametrically *counterposed* to it, because usually material value (exchange values and/or use values) that goes to 'necessity' -- consumption -- *cannot* then go towards bolstering *exchange values*. And, obversely, the building-up of exchange values through the expropriation of surplus labor value means that such stronger exchange values -- a nation's currency -- cannot then be used to provide for people's social necessities.


Steve_American wrote:
Diamonds are more valuable than water because water is all over the place and diamonds are pretty rare. And, the cartel holds most diamonds off the market to keep their price even higher. Soon when fresh drinkable water gets rare you will see people using diamonds to buy water.
We seem to be talking past each other. At least I can't see how to respond to you better.
Please try again.



I agree with your explanation. Feel free to include any topics or points of your own here, possibly on 'rentierism'.


QatzelOk wrote:
At what point, nearing our extinction, do we start to understand the limits to human malleability? That it is, in fact, not infinite unless we're willing to tolerate our own extinction?



Well, this is a good example -- you're pointing out the *negatives* of human abilities, such as the 20th-century ability for nations to destroy humanity and planet earth for the most part. I'd say you're making my argument *for* me here.


QatzelOk wrote:
Or have we also been rendered fatally stupid (ie. willing to tolerate our own extinction) as part of the infinite-malleability process - the free-for-all of social engineering that has been lead by technology-commerce?



I don't think people generally are willing to *tolerate* the extinction of humanity -- we've seen a historic climb-down, in the latter decades of the Cold War, with the SALT treaties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic ... tion_Talks


Unfortunately international relations have degraded since then, with Trump's withdrawal of the U.S. from the INF treaty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermedi ... Withdrawal


I'm not sure what threat you're referring to with 'the free-for-all of social engineering that has been [led] by technology-commerce' -- do you mean to critique the overall recent-decades trend towards increased *privatization* of many social functions?

For context:


G.U.T.S.U.C., Individualism - Tribalism

Spoiler: show
Image
#14988670
All of the rhetoric can be reduced to the reality, which is that 'capitalism' is theft through profit(being the excess of what something is worth over and above the cost),secondly, the state proliferates itself through taxation, which is also theft,with that booty, the state skims the majority of the booty for it's own devices in the maintenance & expansion of it's power.

The rest(the crumbs), are expelled through the social security system, whereas the capitalist hives off his\her profits, increasing them further, by using all means to avoid the state skimming his share of profit through taxes.

It follows that everyone else is a 'payer', that capitalist, along with government's, are 'takers', contrary to popular right-wing,liberal propaganda, that says that those dependent on the state or the workers on low pay are the 'takers'.

Until left-wing governments focus on raising incomes at the bottom income scale, whether in work, disabled or retired, then the system of social security will always be with us & justifying the system of extracting taxes on the rest of society.

Fiscally, it would be easy for the state to make those who can, pay more, it chooses not to do so, therefore societies will never be unified in health or wealth & wellbeing, that is not good for anything, be it government, business,society or the environment & those social 'evils' are totally avoidable.
#14988695
Nonsense wrote:...secondly, the state proliferates itself through taxation, which is also theft,with that booty, the state skims the majority of the booty for it's own devices in the maintenance & expansion of it's power.

Whether taxation is theft or not, depends on the composition and mechanics of the actual state or region involved.

If a "state" is citizen driven and has open consultation in order to reach social consensus, then taxation is definitely NOT theft.

But if the state is composed of backroom deals between corporate liars who spend billions on marketing each election in order to receive brown envelopes from AIPAC and other mafias for four years, it definitely IS theft.

In other words, top-down governance is theft. This is because top-down governance is Rentier-class governance. The revolving door of regulatory capture... erases real governance and puts wolf rentiers in charge of the hen-house.

Bankruptcy and global warming are two results of rentier-class governance.
#14988706
QatzelOk wrote:Whether taxation is theft or not, depends on the composition and mechanics of the actual state or region involved.

If a "state" is citizen driven and has open consultation in order to reach social consensus, then taxation is definitely NOT theft.

But if the state is composed of backroom deals between corporate liars who spend billions on marketing each election in order to receive brown envelopes from AIPAC and other mafias for four years, it definitely IS theft.

In other words, top-down governance is theft. This is because top-down governance is Rentier-class governance. The revolving door of regulatory capture... erases real governance and puts wolf rentiers in charge of the hen-house.

Bankruptcy and global warming are two results of rentier-class governance.



Nonsense -

When the state, as opposed to human needs dictates the appropriation of sequestered money for it's own use, then, the acceptance of taxes is greatly diminished, particularly when it's use is purposed to the continued existence of an economic or politically undemocratic heirarchy, for which the ballot box is used solely to perpetuate such divisions.

When republicans, or Tories use that ballot box to ligitimise the theft of money from the public to benefit their capitalist friends in business, that's NOT 'democracy' & people should not vote for any political party aligned to business, particularly 'BIG' business.

We know that such governments use the tax-spend system to the sole benefit of corrupt capitalism, this has been encapsulated in the speeches of successive Chancellors of the Excheqours under the phrase, " We are, always will be, business friendly", clearly, that puts business before people, it's people that elect governments & government's are serving the wrong masters.
#14988770
@ckaihatsu,
I have posted a lot already. Mostly on economics. That is related to rentiers. To see my posts click on my name next to my avatar, then scroll down to see 'search users posts' and click on that. Then click on each of my many posts that interests you.

You asked what threat we are talking about. It is AGW or ACC. The methane bomb, etc.
#14988774
Nonsense wrote:Nonsense -

Does this mean that you agree with what I wrote?

Because what you provided, right after you quoted my post, is a slightly less succinct way of describing the exact same thing that I had already brilliantly committed to text just ahead of you.

So when you write "nonsense," does it mean "we think alike?" :?:
#14988854
Steve_American wrote:
@ckaihatsu,
I have posted a lot already. Mostly on economics. That is related to rentiers. To see my posts click on my name next to my avatar, then scroll down to see 'search users posts' and click on that. Then click on each of my many posts that interests you.



Thanks, Steve. If you want to keep the conversation going on this topic, you may want to encapsulate your views here on this thread.


Steve_American wrote:
You asked what threat we are talking about. It is AGW or ACC. The methane bomb, etc.



Do you want to run with this topic instead? What do you think humanity can do in the interim to mitigate these problems, and how does politics relate to it?
#14988858
QatzelOk wrote:Does this mean that you agree with what I wrote?

Because what you provided, right after you quoted my post, is a slightly less succinct way of describing the exact same thing that I had already brilliantly committed to text just ahead of you.

So when you write "nonsense," does it mean "we think alike?" :?:



Nonsense -

Take it as a compliment, but don't let it go to your head, it might inflate uncontrollably. 8) :lol: :lol:
#14989034
ckaihatsu wrote:Thanks, Steve. If you want to keep the conversation going on this topic, you may want to encapsulate your views here on this thread.


Do you want to run with this topic instead? What do you think humanity can do in the interim to mitigate these problems, and how does politics relate to it?

On AGW, there is nothing that can be done in the interim that will make any difference. That is, I try to do as little damage as I can, but it isn't going to make any difference. Only a truly hugely massive program of changes is going to make any difference at this point. We have squandered 40 years of warnings. It may even be too late, as several 'scientists' have told us. I hope not.
[One idea I have come up with and not seen anywhere is --- a research project to create a new set of stomach microbes that can replace those in the guts of cows so that they can digest grass and not create methane like they do now. We should still tax steak eating heavily but dairy cows are still a good thing I think; and some grass fed steers from meat too. I'm thinking of worldwide usefulness.

On rentiers. I said that I support capitalism as the basic starting place. What we had in my childhood seemed pretty good [the 50s and 60s] economically. then Nixon took the world off the gold standard. MMT shows us how this would have allowed the economy to have been made even better. Instead the OPEC oil crisis was used by the elites to turn the world around and not only put it functionally back onto a gold(like) standard, but to allow the renties to suck way too much of the wealth being created out of the hands of the workers and into the pockets of the super rich. The workers would have spent it to make their lives better and the rich just stuffed it into their pockets [where it sits unused].
I want a new Progressive New Deal to fix the new solutions into the Constitution so that they can't be eroded by the rich. I want heavy taxes on the super rich to 1] take away the wealth they stole [legally] over the last 30 years, 2] to keep them from keeping too much of their ongoing income, and 3] to limit the amount they can give to their decendents when they die so that everyone must contribute to society with their work or their minds [and not just be parasites clipping coupons].

PS I also have a list of amendments to reform how the US makes its laws and elects the representatives who make those laws.

BTW It turns out that earmarks were a very good thing because it let votes in congress be bought to pass needed legislation and also to send dollars into local economies that needed them. Sure it was abused. But, remember all spending is someones income and everyone needs income. Gov. spending [according to MMT] is a good way to correct imbalances between the different states' total [of all private] incomes. [Money can slowly be sucked out of some states by excess incomes flowing into other states. I think this is a problem in all the rust belt states, they are slowing being squeezed by their money flowing to other states.]
#14989062
Deng Xiaoping famously said, "we have to let some people get rich first" around the time when China was accepting that Marxist stuff doesn't work.

Also this may be helpful: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/4-tips- ... ience.html

"4 tips for negotiating your salary when you have zero industry experience."

Trying to explain this in yet another way, the point at which wealth is created physically may not be the most important point, it just appears that way from certain perspectives.

I think it's possible to accept this stuff without needing to categorically defend every example of poor or dishonest management that might be found out there. The inverse also being true, we don't need to attack every boss.
#14989069
Steve_American wrote:
On AGW, there is nothing that can be done in the interim that will make any difference. That is, I try to do as little damage as I can, but it isn't going to make any difference. Only a truly hugely massive program of changes is going to make any difference at this point. We have squandered 40 years of warnings. It may even be too late, as several 'scientists' have told us. I hope not.
[One idea I have come up with and not seen anywhere is --- a research project to create a new set of stomach microbes that can replace those in the guts of cows so that they can digest grass and not create methane like they do now. We should still tax steak eating heavily but dairy cows are still a good thing I think; and some grass fed steers from meat too. I'm thinking of worldwide usefulness.



Or, use cell culturing to produce meat instead of going through the whole raising-animals thing.


Steve_American wrote:
On rentiers. I said that I support capitalism as the basic starting place. What we had in my childhood seemed pretty good [the 50s and 60s] economically.



Well, the U.S. was a weapons supplier to *both sides* in World War II, so the resulting economic prosperity was atypical.



Of course this list of lend-lease aid looks very impressive, and one might feel sincere admiration for the American partners in the anti-Hitler coalition, except for one tiny detail: US manufacturers were also supplying Nazi Germany at the same time …

For example, John D. Rockefeller Jr. owned a controlling interest in the Standard Oil corporation, but the next largest stockholder was the German chemical company I. G. Farben, through which the firm sold $20 million worth of gasoline and lubricants to the Nazis. And the Venezuelan branch of that company sent 13,000 tons of crude oil to Germany each month, which the Third Reich’s robust chemical industry immediately converted into gasoline. But business between the two nations was not limited to fuel sales – in addition, tungsten, synthetic rubber, and many different components for the auto industry were also being shipped across the Atlantic to the German Führer by Henry Ford. In particular, it is no secret that 30% of all the tires produced in his factories were used by the German Wehrmacht.



[L]end-lease proved to be an inexhaustible source of wealth for many American corporations. In fact, the United States was the only country in the anti-Hitler coalition to reap significant economic dividends from the war.There’s a reason that Americans often refer to WWII as “the good war,” as evidenced, for example, in the title of the book by the famous American historian Studs Terkel: The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1984). With unabashed cynicism he quoted, “While the rest of the world came out bruised and scarred and nearly destroyed, we came out with the most unbelievable machinery, tools, manpower, money … The war was fun for America. I’m not talking about the poor souls who lost sons and daughters. But for the rest of us the war was a hell of a good time.”



https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-o ... ny/5449378



---


Steve_American wrote:
then Nixon took the world off the gold standard.



Due to spending on the Vietnam War.



Starting in the 1959–1969 administration of President Charles de Gaulle and continuing until 1970, France reduced its dollar reserves, exchanging them for gold at the official exchange rate, reducing US economic influence. This, along with the fiscal strain of federal expenditures for the Vietnam War and persistent balance of payments deficits, led U.S. President Richard Nixon to end international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold on August 15, 1971 (the "Nixon Shock").



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



---


Steve_American wrote:
MMT shows us how this would have allowed the economy to have been made even better.



Could you explain *how* here?


Steve_American wrote:
Instead the OPEC oil crisis was used by the elites to turn the world around and not only put it functionally back onto a gold(like) standard,



You mean the petrodollar? (It would be *inevitable* to see this kind of fundamental currency tie to a key energy commodity that underlies most economic activity once the U.S. dollar was off the gold standard, and floating.)


Steve_American wrote:
but to allow the renties to suck way too much of the wealth being created out of the hands of the workers and into the pockets of the super rich. The workers would have spent it to make their lives better and the rich just stuffed it into their pockets [where it sits unused].



I'm going to *generalize* this observation to one of bourgeoisie-vs.-proletariat since, in the class division, the issue of rentier-capital-vs.-equity-capital is a *technical* distinction to those who must sell their labor-power to an employer.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... o/ch01.htm


Capitalism can't survive without including *both* rentier capital (static assets), *and* equity capital (for commodity-production), so *both* kinds of capital are detrimental to workers' interests because they both leech from workers' efforts, by imposing costs for life and living (rentier capital), and by exploitation of surplus labor value (equity capital).


Steve_American wrote:
I want a new Progressive New Deal to fix the new solutions into the Constitution so that they can't be eroded by the rich. I want heavy taxes on the super rich to 1] take away the wealth they stole [legally] over the last 30 years, 2] to keep them from keeping too much of their ongoing income, and 3] to limit the amount they can give to their decendents when they die so that everyone must contribute to society with their work or their minds [and not just be parasites clipping coupons].



Hey, I for one won't be stopping you in this, but I also have to point out that the capitalist state serves the interests of the wealthy regardless, so reforms like this one are mostly just a reshuffling of formalities -- such a 'Progressive New Deal' would do nothing to change the income-inequality dynamic itself.

What *would* be substantive would be the working class taking control of all social production for itself, so that the dynamics of privately-configured housing, food, etc., would no longer be done, thereby cutting out the claims of rentier capital altogether, *and* ending private-property-based employment which only *commodifies* and *exploits* workers, for private profits.


Steve_American wrote:
PS I also have a list of amendments to reform how the US makes its laws and elects the representatives who make those laws.

BTW It turns out that earmarks were a very good thing because it let votes in congress be bought to pass needed legislation and also to send dollars into local economies that needed them. Sure it was abused. But, remember all spending is someones income and everyone needs income. Gov. spending [according to MMT] is a good way to correct imbalances between the different states' total [of all private] incomes. [Money can slowly be sucked out of some states by excess incomes flowing into other states. I think this is a problem in all the rust belt states, they are slowing being squeezed by their money flowing to other states.]



Hmmmm, you sound very much like a nationalist here, with your concerns for the internal matters of the nation-state itself. Please remember that these are *capitalist* interests / concerns, and they won't be able to address your purported concerns with the excesses of the wealthy:


Steve_American wrote:
I want a new Progressive New Deal to fix the new solutions into the Constitution so that they can't be eroded by the rich.
#14989070
Hong Wu wrote:
Deng Xiaoping famously said, "we have to let some people get rich first" around the time when China was accepting that Marxist stuff doesn't work.



Correct -- Deng Xiaoping was a *revisionist* and wasn't anti-imperialist, as Mao was.



Within the Marxist movement, the word revisionism is used to refer to various ideas, principles and theories that are based on a significant revision of fundamental Marxist premises.[1]

The term is most often used by those Marxists who believe that such revisions are unwarranted and represent a "watering down" or abandonment of Marxism—one such common example is the negation of class struggle.[2] As such, revisionism often carries pejorative connotations and the term has been used by many different factions. It is typically applied to others and rarely as a self-description. By extension, people who view themselves as fighting against revisionism have often self-identified as anti-revisionists.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionism_(Marxism)




Deng Xiaoping Theory (simplified Chinese: 邓小平理论; traditional Chinese: 鄧小平理論; pinyin: Dèng Xiǎopíng Lǐlùn), also known as Dengism, is the series of political and economic ideologies first developed by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The theory does not claim to reject Marxism–Leninism or Mao Zedong Thought but instead seeks to adapt them to the existing socio-economic conditions of China.[1]

Deng also stressed opening China to the outside world,[2] the implementation of one country, two systems, and through the phrase "seek truth from facts", an advocation of political and economic pragmatism.[3]



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




The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.



https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... o/ch01.htm



---


Hong Wu wrote:
Also this may be helpful: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/4-tips- ... ience.html

"4 tips for negotiating your salary when you have zero industry experience."

Trying to explain this in yet another way, the point at which wealth is created physically may not be the most important point, it just appears that way from certain perspectives.

I think it's possible to accept this stuff without needing to categorically defend every example of poor or dishonest management that might be found out there. The inverse also being true, we don't need to attack every boss.



Well, you're correct in that none of this is *personal* -- we're talking about the objective dynamics of a particular political economy, that of capitalism, which affects those of the two competing *classes* differently.

Here's a history framework I made, to provide a generic context:


‭History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

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#14989279
ckaihatsu wrote:Or, use cell culturing to produce meat instead of going through the whole raising-animals thing.

Well, the U.S. was a weapons supplier to *both sides* in World War II, so the resulting economic prosperity was atypical.

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Due to spending on the Vietnam War.

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Could you explain *how* here?

You mean the petrodollar? (It would be *inevitable* to see this kind of fundamental currency tie to a key energy commodity that underlies most economic activity once the U.S. dollar was off the gold standard, and floating.)

I'm going to *generalize* this observation to one of bourgeoisie-vs.-proletariat since, in the class division, the issue of rentier-capital-vs.-equity-capital is a *technical* distinction to those who must sell their labor-power to an employer.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... o/ch01.htm

Capitalism can't survive without including *both* rentier capital (static assets), *and* equity capital (for commodity-production), so *both* kinds of capital are detrimental to workers' interests because they both leech from workers' efforts, by imposing costs for life and living (rentier capital), and by exploitation of surplus labor value (equity capital).

Hey, I for one won't be stopping you in this, but I also have to point out that the capitalist state serves the interests of the wealthy regardless, so reforms like this one are mostly just a reshuffling of formalities -- such a 'Progressive New Deal' would do nothing to change the income-inequality dynamic itself.

What *would* be substantive would be the working class taking control of all social production for itself, so that the dynamics of privately-configured housing, food, etc., would no longer be done, thereby cutting out the claims of rentier capital altogether, *and* ending private-property-based employment which only *commodifies* and *exploits* workers, for private profits.

Hmmmm, you sound very much like a nationalist here, with your concerns for the internal matters of the nation-state itself. Please remember that these are *capitalist* interests / concerns, and they won't be able to address your purported concerns with the excesses of the wealthy.

I'll respond to the 'petrodollar' question 1st. Prof. Mark Blyth says in Youtube videos that the stagflation of the late 70s was caused by full employment causing the investor class to stop investing to increase production. They did this because [he says] they felt that the inflation they could foresee was going to eat up any profit that their increased production would have generated. He also, mentions the OPEC oil price raises. OTOH, IMHO it was a combination of factors. 1] Vietnam war spending in the late 60s, 2] the run on the dollar and the US gold supply, 3] Nixon taking the world off gold, and 4] the Arabs in OPEC punishing the West for backing Israel by cutting oil production and also raising oil prices; and then stagnation was caused by the Fed. responding to the inflation that followed from oil prices raising with an interest rate increase that had to be raised several times because the inflation kept going up because the oil price kept being raised by OPEC. So, we got the combination of --- stagflation. The real lesion of stagflation in the 70s should have been that it is not possible to win a fight against inflation by raising interest rates if the inflation is caused mainly by increases in the price of a key commodity like oil, and will instead cause the economy to stagnate without stopping inflation.
. . . America's rich were mad because full employment seemed to keep their profits from being raised because wages kept pace with productivity increases. Those increases had been funded with the money of the rich or their corps and yet there was no return on those investments because wage increases ate it up. So, the rich pushed hard for a new theory to replace Keynesian economics.
. . So no, I was not referring to the petrodollar. I was referring to Neo-liberal theory gaining momentum to maintain the old gold standard rules even though the world was off the gold standard. At first it was called Supply Side economics. And then, Europe going onto the euro certainly put it back onto a pseudo-gold standard. One of the key ideas that was pushed into the public's memory was the idea that the US Gov. is and must be just like a family or a corp. Below, I assert that the family analogy is not logically true in a fiat currency system.

You asked 'how would MMT have allowed the economy to have been better than was possible on the gold standard'. Have you ever noticed the correlation between 'good economic times' and an increase in mining that increases the nation's per capita gold-silver (hard money) supply? And the corresponding correlation of bad times with a decrease in the per capita gold supply. Examples are --- ancient Athens and its silver mines, ancient Rome and the ending of gold mining in Spain coupled with gold being used to bribe the barbarians to not invade, Mexican gold and Inca silver flowing into Spain/Europe after 1520, and for America after 1849 thru 1900 when all that gold and silver was mined as the population grew.
Modern Money Theory claims to be just a description of how nations with a fiat currency now operate. IMHO this is not correct. MMT says that a jobs guarantee is required as a buffer to allow full employment without inflation, let alone hyperinflation. MMT also calls for the use of Gov. fiscal policy to provide full employment; real, not fake, full employment. And, the use of Monetary instead is claimed to not be enough once interest rates reach zero%. So, MMT does have some policy prescriptions. It is not just descriptive.
MMT strongly claims that deficits don't matter *at all* until full employment is reached, if corps. will expand hire people to increase local production when effective demand (desire to spend coupled with cash in hand) is present. MMT strongly claims that the total national debt is not a bad thing because it just represents the private sector's savings, and the Fed. can control interest rates on that debt or buy the bonds itself (with a simple law change). MMT asserts that spending is always someone's income, so cutting spending (esp. Gov. spending) is always cutting someone's income and therefore their spending as well as their tax payments. MMT asserts that when and if inflation becomes too large that it can cut spending and raise taxes to suck up the excess cash at that time. MMT strongly asserts that that a Gov. with its own fiat currency can always pay its bills as they come due because in a pinch it can just create money to pay them. Therefore, MMT very strongly claims that such Govs. are *not at all* like a family or a corp.
Under the gold standard all gov. had to protect the nation's gold supply. This meant it could only deficit spend if it could borrow the money to do it. Just spending money in a pinch would soon mean there was more money in circulation than the nation had gold to back. If there was a run on its gold supply then, when there was no more gold, its remaining currency would be worthless. MMT asserts that this is no longer true when the nation meets a few criteria; it issues its own fiat currency, it floats that currency against all others, it only borrows in that currency, and it has no debts is any other currency. In this situation that nation can never go bankrupt, so there should never be any extra interest rate charged to cover the risk of bankruptcy. IMHO, this means it will always be better for that nation to create currency to repay its bonds and suffer some inflation than to instead suffer the far greater damage that defaulting on its bonds would cause.

Therefore, being off the gold standard would have allowed Gov. policies to maintain real full employment without inflation. This would have required Gov. policies to have protected the US economy from too much foreign imports. So, no NAFTA treaty.

You accused me of being a 'nationalist' as if this is a shitty thing to be. Well, I do want the rest of the world to do better. And despite what you think I am willing to see the living standards of the mass of Americans fall. But, if and only if this also applies to the living standards of America's rich and to Europeans too. I am willing to see this because of the risk that AGW will heat-up the world enough to destroy the economic base of civilization, which is grain farming. If it were not for this I would not see a reason why Americans should suffer because the rest of the world can't get its act together.
. . . Of course, this also assumes that American foreign policy is totally different from what it has been in terms of working to keep the rest of the world poor and struggling.

You said you are a 'revolutionary'. You sound like a Communist. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate communists like most Americans do. I just don't think that system can ever be made to work because all people will do anything to get their children to have a better life. So, if they can't get power from money they get power from they & their children joining the Communist Party and pushing non-members down.
You attack my ideas because I start from capitalism. I understand the risks of this that is why I call for a bunch of US constitutional Amendments to lock in economic rules to cap wealth and the resulting political power, to force the Gov. to provide Soc. Sec. and healthcare to all, and to make sure all the citizens have effective control over the Gov. through elections. {If you want we could start a new thread where I can explain these 3 sets of ideas, and you can argue your ideas in response.}
#14989365
Steve_American wrote:
I'll respond to the 'petrodollar' question 1st. Prof. Mark Blyth says in Youtube videos that the stagflation of the late 70s was caused by full employment causing the investor class to stop investing to increase production.



What about the *early* '70s, though -- ?

Why did Nixon take the U.S. off of the gold standard then? It was a *qualitative* drop and the beginning of *inflation* in the U.S. due to the empire's drop in global status after having to withdraw from Vietnam without enjoying any spoils of war -- costs without benefits.



[E]ven during the heyday of Keynesian economics, the secular rise in long-term interest rates indicated that it was only a matter of time before the efficacy of Keynesian polices would come to an end. By the end of the 1960s, as the boom fueled by the regressive Kennedy-Johnson tax cut and the Vietnam War began to rapidly raise prices in terms of gold, gold production began to stagnate and then decline.

If the rules of the gold standard in any form—including the rules of the Bretton Woods dollar-gold exchange standard—had been followed, the result would have been a classic deflationary depression. Such a depression on the backs of the workers and other toilers would have set the stage for a new series of “expansionary” industrial cycles.



The policies of the Keynesians did change the form of the economic crises somewhat. Instead of deflation in terms of currency, there came inflation, combined with unprecedented interest rates as the money capitalists progressively lost confidence in paper currencies.

On two occasions, first in 1973-74 and then in 1979-1980, panicky flights to safety in gold led not only to extreme inflation but violent recessions that finally drove even the official unemployment rate in the United States above 10 percent by late 1982. In Western Europe, too, unemployment reached levels that were characteristic of the post-World I years rather than the “full employment” of the early post-World War II years.



https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpres ... ker-shock/




Under the dollar standard, the United States—both at the government and corporate levels—can pay most of its debts in U.S. dollars. If the weight of the dollar debts threatens to bankrupt U.S. corporations or state and local governments, the U.S. Federal Reserve System can simply devalue the dollar—that is, let the dollar price of gold rise, as well as allow the exchange rate of the dollar to fall against foreign currencies—and the debt is lessened. And of course the U.S. Federal Reserve System, which in effect prints dollars, is at the service of both the U.S. government and the big U.S. corporations.



However, the dollar standard does give the United States the ability to run balance of trade deficits that are far larger than those of any other country. The limit is that when the trade deficits get too large, the dollar starts to fall rapidly against both gold and other currencies. Once that point is reached, inflation and interest rates start to climb quickly, undermining the domestic U.S. and world currency and credit system.

That is exactly what we saw in 1973-74 and 1979-80. When that point is reached, a severe recession soon follows that again reduces the U.S. trade deficit to the level the world market is willing to tolerate. How large the U.S. trade deficit can get depends on the level of interest rates and the general credibility of the dollar on one side and the level of world gold production on the other.



https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpres ... ar-system/



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Steve_American wrote:
They did this because [he says] they felt that the inflation they could foresee was going to eat up any profit that their increased production would have generated.



Okay, yeah, stagflation would cut against the effectiveness of equity capital.

We should also use a *class warfare* analysis, wherein organized labor was becoming more socially empowered due to U.S. capital's lessened potency and effectiveness for social production and economic growth.



Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement

The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) was an organization of African-American workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation's Dodge Main assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan.

Detroit labor activist Martin Glaberman estimated at the time that the Hamtramck plant was 70 per cent black while the union local (UAW Local 3), the plant management and lower supervision, and the Hamtramck city administration was dominated by older Polish-American workers.[1]

DRUM sought to organize black workers to obtain concessions not only from the Chrysler management, but also from the United Auto Workers. Walter Reuther and the senior leadership had been early supporters of the American Civil Rights Movement; yet in spite of their growing presence in the auto-industry African-Americans rarely rose to positions of leadership within the union. On July 8, 1968 DRUM led a wildcat strike against conditions in the Hamtramck plant. The strike was observed by some 4,000 workers, lasted 2.5 days and prevented the production of 3,000 cars. In the subsequent Local 3 election, DRUM ran as an alternative slate. Although it did not win, the new organization drew notice for its militancy and willingness to challenge the UAW hierarchy.

The "Revolutionary Union Movement" form of organization spread to other Detroit plants: including FRUM (Ford Revolutionary Union Movement) at the Ford River Rouge Plant, and ELRUM (Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement) at the Chrysler Eldon Avenue plant. These organizations were brought together in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers which formed in June 1969.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Rev ... n_Movement



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Steve_American wrote:
He also, mentions the OPEC oil price raises. OTOH, IMHO it was a combination of factors. 1] Vietnam war spending in the late 60s, 2] the run on the dollar and the US gold supply, 3] Nixon taking the world off gold, and 4] the Arabs in OPEC punishing the West for backing Israel by cutting oil production and also raising oil prices; and then stagnation was caused by the Fed.



First you're mentioning an array of historical factors, but then you finish here by *oversimplifying* the economic stagnation of the period to being caused by just Fed actions.


Steve_American wrote:
responding to the inflation that followed from oil prices raising with an interest rate increase that had to be raised several times because the inflation kept going up because the oil price kept being raised by OPEC. So, we got the combination of --- stagflation. The real lesion of stagflation in the 70s should have been that it is not possible to win a fight against inflation by raising interest rates if the inflation is caused mainly by increases in the price of a key commodity like oil, and will instead cause the economy to stagnate without stopping inflation.



It really sounds like you're trying to place blame entirely on OPEC, when, as you've noted, that action (of OPEC raising its oil prices) was rooted in *geopolitical* conflicts. Also, people obviously didn't want U.S. dollars then, so the empire took a hit as a result of its losing its imperialist adventurist foray into Vietnam, a totally unnecessary war.


Steve_American wrote:
. . . America's rich were mad because full employment seemed to keep their profits from being raised because wages kept pace with productivity increases. Those increases had been funded with the money of the rich or their corps and yet there was no return on those investments because wage increases ate it up. So, the rich pushed hard for a new theory to replace Keynesian economics.



The rich weren't a bunch of *intellectuals* then, 'pushing hard for a new theory' -- they brought the imperialism *home*, and intensified the U.S.' *internal colonies*, as in the South, and increased *class warfare* -- note that the correlation between wages and productivity increases only lasted till about '73:

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And:



The explosion of media commentary, including an editorial in the New York Times denouncing McNamara personally, demonstrates that the deep divisions produced by the war in Vietnam continue to wrack the American ruling class 20 years after the final defeat of the puppet regime and the entry of victorious National Liberation Front (NLF) forces into Saigon.



By the early 1960s the economic consequences of these policies began to be expressed in a growing US balance of payments deficit that was further exacerbated as military spending in support of the war in Vietnam began to swell.

The Johnson administration was repeatedly confronted with the choice between escalating the war and financing the social programs proposed under the slogan of a “war on poverty,” whose urgency was underscored by the eruption of rioting in the ghetto neighborhoods of scores of American cities from 1965 on.

Forced to decide between guns and butter, Johnson sought to have both, and he refused to enact a tax increase to pay for the war, fearing its unpopularity. The result was a steady erosion of US financial reserves and mounting pressure on the dollar, culminating in the gold-dollar crisis of February 1968.

The political crisis that exploded to the surface in 1968—the year of the Tet offensive, Johnson’s announcement that he would not seek reelection, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy—staggered American imperialism. The war in Vietnam dragged on for another seven years, but however bloody the denouement, decisive sections of the American ruling class had by then decided that the cost of the war was too great.



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/07/mcna-j08.html



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Steve_American wrote:
. . So no, I was not referring to the petrodollar. I was referring to Neo-liberal theory gaining momentum to maintain the old gold standard rules even though the world was off the gold standard. At first it was called Supply Side economics. And then, Europe going onto the euro certainly put it back onto a pseudo-gold standard. One of the key ideas that was pushed into the public's memory was the idea that the US Gov. is and must be just like a family or a corp.



Okay, agreed on the facts here. ('Neoliberal' / supply-side / old-gold-standard economics = government austerity measures over the provisioning of social services = punishing the poor and/or workers = class warfare from above.)


Steve_American wrote:
Below, I assert that the family analogy is not logically true in a fiat currency system.

You asked 'how would MMT have allowed the economy to have been better than was possible on the gold standard'. Have you ever noticed the correlation between 'good economic times' and an increase in mining that increases the nation's per capita gold-silver (hard money) supply?



Yes:



In a classic depression—one without Keynesian intervention—the stagnation in the accumulation of real capital combined with rising gold production reduces the ratio of real capital to gold. That, in turn, leads to lower interest rates. More of the surplus value goes to the industrial and commercial capitalists in the form of the profit of enterprise and less to the money capitalists in the form of interest. All of this encourages a rise in investment when the economy recovers, just like it did after World War II.

The high unemployment of depression also leads to lower money wages and a rise in the rate of surplus value. Not only does a greater mass of the surplus value go to the industrial and commercial capitalists in the form of the profit of enterprise but the total mass of the surplus value also increases.

The policies of the Keynesians did change the form of the economic crises somewhat. Instead of deflation in terms of currency, there came inflation, combined with unprecedented interest rates as the money capitalists progressively lost confidence in paper currencies.

On two occasions, first in 1973-74 and then in 1979-1980, panicky flights to safety in gold led not only to extreme inflation but violent recessions that finally drove even the official unemployment rate in the United States above 10 percent by late 1982. In Western Europe, too, unemployment reached levels that were characteristic of the post-World I years rather than the “full employment” of the early post-World War II years.



https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpres ... ker-shock/



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Steve_American wrote:
And the corresponding correlation of bad times with a decrease in the per capita gold supply. Examples are --- ancient Athens and its silver mines, ancient Rome and the ending of gold mining in Spain coupled with gold being used to bribe the barbarians to not invade, Mexican gold and Inca silver flowing into Spain/Europe after 1520, and for America after 1849 thru 1900 when all that gold and silver was mined as the population grew.
Modern Money Theory claims to be just a description of how nations with a fiat currency now operate. IMHO this is not correct. MMT says that a jobs guarantee is required as a buffer to allow full employment without inflation,



Again your nationalism-based analysis here is insufficient -- by looking at *class* dynamics we can see that full employment is *injurious* to the capitalist economy because then organized labor is *winning* the class war, and workers can increasingly dictate the terms of their employment, or even take power themselves over what they're producing.


Steve_American wrote:
let alone hyperinflation. MMT also calls for the use of Gov. fiscal policy to provide full employment; real, not fake, full employment. And, the use of Monetary instead is claimed to not be enough once interest rates reach zero%. So, MMT does have some policy prescriptions. It is not just descriptive.



Again, capitalism inherently has *no interest* in providing full employment because it would diminish its dominant *class* position in the process.


Steve_American wrote:
MMT strongly claims that deficits don't matter *at all* until full employment is reached, if corps. will expand hire people to increase local production when effective demand (desire to spend coupled with cash in hand) is present. MMT strongly claims that the total national debt is not a bad thing because it just represents the private sector's savings, and the Fed. can control interest rates on that debt or buy the bonds itself (with a simple law change). MMT asserts that spending is always someone's income, so cutting spending (esp. Gov. spending) is always cutting someone's income and therefore their spending as well as their tax payments. MMT asserts that when and if inflation becomes too large that it can cut spending and raise taxes to suck up the excess cash at that time. MMT strongly asserts that that a Gov. with its own fiat currency can always pay its bills as they come due because in a pinch it can just create money to pay them. Therefore, MMT very strongly claims that such Govs. are *not at all* like a family or a corp.



Since I'm all for enabling social production I'd rather see *increases* in government spending than any austerity measures that strengthen nationalist capitalist currencies at the expense of wages, benefits, and jobs for the working class due to lessened economic activity and slow growth, as we have today.


Steve_American wrote:
Under the gold standard all gov. had to protect the nation's gold supply. This meant it could only deficit spend if it could borrow the money to do it. Just spending money in a pinch would soon mean there was more money in circulation than the nation had gold to back. If there was a run on its gold supply then, when there was no more gold, its remaining currency would be worthless. MMT asserts that this is no longer true when the nation meets a few criteria; it issues its own fiat currency, it floats that currency against all others, it only borrows in that currency, and it has no debts is any other currency. In this situation that nation can never go bankrupt, so there should never be any extra interest rate charged to cover the risk of bankruptcy. IMHO, this means it will always be better for that nation to create currency to repay its bonds and suffer some inflation than to instead suffer the far greater damage that defaulting on its bonds would cause.

Therefore, being off the gold standard would have allowed Gov. policies to maintain real full employment without inflation. This would have required Gov. policies to have protected the US economy from too much foreign imports. So, no NAFTA treaty.



You're being *contradictory* here, though, because you're first *acknowledging* a country's foreign economic relations by mentioning its own currency versus that of other nation-states, but then you're implicitly favoring economic isolationism and tariffs in order to cut-off international trade relations.

So while you sound nominally economically *progressive* with your orientation towards equity capital, over rentier capital, geopolitically you're being *regressive* with your line that attempts to constrain capitalism to each individual nation-state itself, instead of promoting international trade.


Steve_American wrote:
You accused me of being a 'nationalist' as if this is a shitty thing to be. Well, I do want the rest of the world to do better. And despite what you think I am willing to see the living standards of the mass of Americans fall. But, if and only if this also applies to the living standards of America's rich and to Europeans too. I am willing to see this because of the risk that AGW will heat-up the world enough to destroy the economic base of civilization, which is grain farming. If it were not for this I would not see a reason why Americans should suffer because the rest of the world can't get its act together.



Do you want to address U.S. sanctions on Venezuela now?

You seem to think that all nation-state relations ('geopolitics') are inherently *neutral*, when in fact there are *histories* to these international trade relations. The U.S. is *not* being isolationist / nationally-'self-sufficient' by reaching over to support a coup agenda over Venezuela while threatening military invasion.

No, Americans should not suffer, but neither should Venezuelans, though they are, by the millions.


Steve_American wrote:
. . . Of course, this also assumes that American foreign policy is totally different from what it has been in terms of working to keep the rest of the world poor and struggling.



Okay, thank you, that's better. I stand corrected.


Steve_American wrote:
You said you are a 'revolutionary'. You sound like a Communist. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate communists like most Americans do. I just don't think that system can ever be made to work because all people will do anything to get their children to have a better life. So, if they can't get power from money they get power from they & their children joining the Communist Party and pushing non-members down.



It's a valid critique, though I'll point out that, precisely, you're referring to *Stalinism*, and I'm not a Stalinist. I don't advocate a class-like substitutionist specialist professional administrative bureaucratic elite, but rather the collective control over social production by the world's working class, together.


Steve_American wrote:
You attack my ideas because I start from capitalism. I understand the risks of this that is why I call for a bunch of US constitutional Amendments to lock in economic rules to cap wealth and the resulting political power, to force the Gov. to provide Soc. Sec. and healthcare to all, and to make sure all the citizens have effective control over the Gov. through elections. {If you want we could start a new thread where I can explain these 3 sets of ideas, and you can argue your ideas in response.}



Well, I'm not against any social-service-type *reforms* that you may be touting, but I'll point out that they amount to mere drops in the ocean as long as the rule of capital is allowed to continue. Workers need to be in control.
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