Are these mingy little beasts really the champions of the working class? - Page 19 - 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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#15068694
ckaihatsu wrote:You've been critical of rentier-capital-type property rights, but you still haven't proposed your own *alternative* for such -- how *should* privileged assets like land be divvied-up, if not through the real estate markets?

Land should be allocated by competitive user bidding in the rental market, but the rent should go to the government and community that create its value, not to private owners who just take the money in return for nothing.
I've already shown that your status-quo-supporting, nationalist type is *dependent* on the bourgeois government apparatus for 'refereeing' among the private-ownership players,

Nope. There is no private ownership of land in Hong Kong, so that exception to your rule refutes you: the refereeing between rival prospective private land users does not imply they are owners.
through my use of the immigration issue (capital is allowed to seek-out better markets around the globe, but *people* are not allowed to cross national borders to seek out better opportunities in the *job* markets).

No, I refuted you by pointing out the fact that government is responsible for securing and reconciling the rights of its own citizens, not citizens of other nations.
And yet you've admitted that capitalism is dependent on the privatization and commodification of *land* (etc.),

It is defined as including private ownership of land.
plus I don't hear any concrete proposals from you about any specific *land reforms*.

Then you aren't paying attention. I propose to recover the publicly created rental value of land for public purposes and benefit, and justly to compensate people for the loss of their liberty rights that exclusive land tenure entails.
You're more status-quo than anything else, your flashes of contrariness notwithstanding.

It may look status-quo, but it is radically different from both capitalism and socialism.
So you'd be perfectly content with the *opposite* of land reform, which is the *consolidation* of estates within a nobility-type class.

Only if they paid the full rent to the community -- which would make them very much the opposite of a nobility class, because holding the land would TAKE wealth from them rather than GIVING it to them.
It would be a reaction that would overturn the populist gains of the French Revolution.

The French revolution failed to liberate people because the revolutionaries were socialists, and refused to learn the lessons the physiocrats had taught.
As I said before, say goodbye to the gains of the American Revolution, to the use of equity capital for industrialized manufactures, and to 'liberty', since you're edging backwards towards feudalism and slavery.

That's just more garbage with no basis in fact.
Do you mean that you're critical of the non-productive financial gains made from rents and interest, as distinct from the commodity-producing gains made by equity capital, by exploiting labor power?

No, I am critical of gains made by inflicting artificial scarcity on others, not gains made by RELIEVING scarcity for the BENEFIT of others.

GET IT???
Of course they do -- a plot of land is discrete, just as a painting is.

More disingenuous garbage from you. Why do you refuse to know the fact that land was already there anyway, while a painting had to be produced by labor? Being "discrete" -- whatever you incorrectly imagine that might mean -- has nothing to do with it.
Gold is finite / limited in quantity,

It must be extracted and refined by labor. Land is already there.
and in no case can two different owners own the exact same asset.

<sigh> Land is not merely finite but FIXED in supply, so by owning land, the landowner DEPRIVES OTHERS of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise have been accessible.

GET IT???

By contrast, if I mine and refine some gold, that has no effect whatever on any gold others have mined or may want to mine.

GET IT???
(Think of the claims to the *returns* from such an asset -- rent / interest, and/or capital gains or profits can only go to one owner, for each discrete portion of asset-value, whatever that may happen to be.

Why do you refuse to know WHERE THE VALUE COMES FROM?
You're just throwing out a dogmatic line without thinking it through.

I have thought all this through incomparably better than you or Karl Marx, as I prove every time I waste my valuable time trying to educate you.
Hmmmm, you're continuing to be mostly *opaque* with your meanings --

No. I am very, very clear: clearer than anyone else you have ever encountered, and certainly orders of magnitude clearer than Karl Marx.
do you agree, or not, that rentier-type assets like land are *non-productive* because they do not directly produce commodities (which are then bought-and-sold) ?

No. Land contributes to production; that is why it yields rent. Hello? It is the land OWNER who does not contribute to production because the land was already there, ready to use, with no help from him or any previous owner.

GET IT??
*Factories* are also non-human, yet they're considered to be *productive* capital since they / the machinery is directly used in the manufacture of goods-type commodities, through the exploitation of human labor power.

Land and factories both contribute to production. But unlike the landowner, the provider of a factory contributes to production because the factory would not otherwise have been there.

GET IT??
Hmmmm, I don't think that this is the case.

So you are wrong. Shocker.
Consider the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, with the nascent use of water wheels in England -- tapping 'external' sources of power, beyond that of people and animals, is what *technologically* brought us out of feudalism,

It was advances in military technology that ended feudalism, not water wheels.
and made capital's total size much larger than it was within constrained, monarchical, gold-based nation-states in Europe.

That completely misunderstands the development of industrial technology.
You're not understanding -- human society does *not require* capital for mere food-production -- that could be done with just serfdom / slavery, and *feudal* relations, as has already happened historically.

What nonsense. You think feudal food production doesn't require capital?? Capital has been a necessary part of food production since our remote, pre-human ancestors started using stone tools. Indeed, one of the differences between anatomically modern humans and our Neanderthal rivals was the greater complexity of the tool technology associated with the former. We cannot even survive winter outside the tropics without clothing and shelter technology that would be impossible without substantial capital.
With equity capital, though, and industrialization, and food (etc.) for wage workers, all kinds of goods-and-services *commodities* can be produced, but to increase a workers' own costs -- for food, housing, etc. -- for making their / our labor available, is *profiteering*.

"Profiteering" is meaningless Marxist gibberish. The increase in the worker's cost of housing -- actually, of land -- to have access to economic opportunity is rent seeking. It is rent -- returns obtained by depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible -- that is the source of worker exploitation, not profit. Try to get that through your head.
This is an excellent illustration of the existence of *class* relations under capitalism since the absence of a standard minimum wage, or 'living wage', again highlights this socially-backward 'profiteering' in addition to the regular, hour-by-hour *exploitation* of workers' labor power, in the commodity-production process.

Again, that is nothing but meaningless Marxist gibberish. You will never have anything interesting to say on this topic until you can find a willingness to know the fact that it is the LANDOWNER'S PRIVILEGE that deprives the worker of his liberty, his options, and therefore his bargaining power, placing him in a disadvantageous position vis-a-vis employers and thus impoverishing him, NOT the employer's profit.
Let me put it *this* way -- your repeatedly expressed concern has been with the economic costs of *rentier*-based assets, like that of land, to capital.

To everyone.
Now think of the same *rentier*-based costs, but to the *worker* -- rent for human housing for those laborers, and interest payments made to *non-commodity-producing* wealth that just sits in banks, often covered by the nation-state by increased taxation and/or its increasing of the country's money supply.

Yes, I understand those costs incomparably better than you. And your point would be....?
Yes, you *are* flip-flopping, because just above, in this same post, you said:

That does not contradict anything I said.
So you consider landowning to be a 'privilege', which is the 'legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation'.

Bingo. Thank you for finally consenting to know a fact.
You still haven't addressed my prior 'First Cause' argument, which is: Who is entitled to make the first claim of ownership over a previously unclaimed parcel of land, and for what reasons?

No one can ever rightly claim ownership of land. Exclusive tenure can only rightly be obtained by making just compensation to the community of those whom you deprive of it.
So your position on land ownership is *contradictory*

Nope. You should know right away that that is not the answer.
-- either it's [1] a non-commodity-productive 'privilege', initially a land-grab, that deprives others of usage of the same land,

That is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality.
or else [2] it is a capitalism-necessary 'enhancement' to industrial production

I see where you may be having trouble understanding. This is a little bit complicated.

Private landowning is necessary to capitalism by definition, which is why I oppose capitalism, not because it is an enhancement to industrial production. It actually harms industrial production by forcing producers to subsidize landowners. However, pre-private-landowning arrangements such as non-exclusive use, common ownership, customary clan landholding, etc. are even worse than private landowning, because at least the private landowner has a financial incentive to allocate the land to whoever is most productive, and can thus afford to pay him the most rent. The geoist system I advocate enjoys the best of both worlds: the productive efficiency of market allocation to the high-bidding private users, but without the parasitism and forced subsidization of paying private landowners rent for doing nothing.
that *deserves* rent-accumulating payments for its private usage.

The COMMUNITY deserves the rent for private usage because it CREATES the land's value and secures the user's exclusive tenure.
Are you pro-land-capital, or anti-land-capital?

Meaningless. Land and capital are non-overlapping.
You're again being contradictory

NO I AM NOT, and I will thank you to remember it.
-- is land / asset ownership to be defined in terms of asset value (exchange value), or isn't it?

No, the land's exchange value is derived from the privilege of ownership: it is basically how much more the market expects the owner to take from the community by owning the land than he will pay in taxes on it.
Yes, I understand that there's *use value* that goes with land ownership,

No. The use value comes from secure, exclusive tenure, not ownership. See Hong Kong.
namely for hosting productive machinery (a factory), but if all that matters is this land-use-value (for hosting equity-type-capital-based values, productive goods) then why are you content to allow land to both be a 'privilege',

That's NOT all that matters, and it is OWNING land that is the privilege, not land. See the definition of privilege.
*and* to also value it in terms of *exchange* value (asset value), like any other commodity?

Its rental value is necessary to efficient allocation. Not its exchange value. See above. Land's exchange value is nothing but a measure of the injustice of private landowning.
I think you're actually running-up against the inherent contradiction between exchange values, and use values

I prefer to be accurate, and distinguish value -- what a thing would trade for -- from utility -- its capacity to satisfy human desires.
-- if land becomes a commodity sheerly for *speculation*, as it often does, then its counterpart *use value* is eclipsed, and the cost of hosting the factory (rent payments) becomes much greater, with no accompanying increase in actual productivity of the commodity goods and services that the factory produces.

Right. That is what happens when the rent is available for private appropriation.
Economically this is a *reactionary*, *backward* dynamic, on the trajectory towards feudalism, since the bourgeois politics of the day then defends this rentier faction of capital even though rentier capital / land is *non-commodity-productive*. Why should the commodity-productive portion of the economy have to endure greater productive costs to its *equity* capital, passed along to the consumer (for possibly life-necessary goods and services), when such costs are based on an asset, land, that doesn't directly add-into / increase / enhance the commodity-productive process?

If I understand what you are asking here, it shouldn't. Land rent is a cost, but it does not ADD to production costs because it is the cost of obtaining an economic advantage -- i.e., the cost of equivalently reducing other costs. That is why the private landowner's claim to the rent is superficially plausible: the land user doesn't really lose anything by paying the rent -- indeed he pays it willingly. The problem is that
1. the user (and everyone else) has been deprived of their liberty to use the land without just compensation so that the private landowner can get something for nothing; and
2. the land's value comes mainly from desirable public services and infrastructure paid for with other people's taxes. I.e., the land user must pay for government twice so that the landowner can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing.
Here's the crux of it, in this segment -- is society to consider rentier capital / land as actually being commodity-productive, or not?

Land aids production. The private landowner does not. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.
Yes, the landowner charges rent for the land's use-value, but can that land really be termed 'materially productive', or not?

Why else would the user be willing to pay rent for it??
This isn't a groupthink-political term -- this is an objective, impartial material analysis that's either right or wrong. Is rentier capital / land actually materially productive, in the same way that the machinery of a factory is, or isn't it -- ?

It indisputably is, as the explanation of Ricardian rent makes clear. It's the rentier that is not materially productive.
The Marxist definition, of course, is that it's *not*, that the land does not contribute to the production of commodities -- and I walked through the example of land *speculation* in the prior segment, which is an illustration of capitalism's inherent contradiction between *exchange values* and *use values*.

That was utterly beside the point. The fact that people can speculate in the privilege of owning land doesn't affect land's necessary role in production. You don't seem able to comprehend that land is not landowning.

So, to confirm, you're saying that, yes, the privilege of privately owning land / rentier-capital, is a yoke on liberty?

Yes, given the correct definition of rent.
(Because liquid capital cannot go to *both* of two destinations at once -- it cannot both go to rentier capital / land as a rent payment, *and* also go into equity stocks in the interests of making a return on that investment.)

THAT'S NOT THE REASON!!!
You still need to clarify whether rentier capital / land is commodity-productive, or not.

I have been very clear. It is the concept of something being "commodity-productive" or not that obscures the truth.
I've already shown you to be *hypocritical* with this statement of yours,

No, you have not.
because you're content to allow *non*-free-markets when it comes to workers in the international job markets -- you favor your nationalist regulated *closed borders* over any 'free market' in the jobs market.

I don't have a strong position either way on that, though I think democratically accountable sovereign governments have a right to restrict immigration. Free markets can only apply within national borders, because they are reliant on government to secure the relevant property, liberty, and contract rights.
Sure, I already know that land rental itself does not confer any economic advantage to the worker -- you're making my argument *for* me that land / rentier capital is *not productive* because it is only a *cost* to either (equity) capital, to workers' inherent human needs for life and living, or both.

It is not only a cost, because the user is only willing to pay the cost because it confers an equivalent advantage.
Okay, so then, given this, where do you stand on the economic process / dynamic of *privatization*?

It is probably a good idea where the benefits of competition are available, but has been widely applied where they are not, such as natural resources and natural monopolies.
If some asset, like an oil extraction facility, happens to be *state-owned*, then should it remain that way, or should it be *privatized*?

It is the natural resource that should not be privatized. The extraction machinery is neither a natural resource nor a natural monopoly. Benefits of competition are available via privatization.
Should *many more* assets be 'de-privatized' and returned to general, common usage, as through nationalization?

That depends on the asset. We can see the horrible effects of nationalizing the oil industry in Venezuela, but the benefits of retaining natural resources in public ownership in Norway, Alaska, etc.
Okay, from this same post:

Where is the contradiction? You are still not understanding that land is not landowning.
#15068761
Truth to Power wrote:the landowner DEPRIVES OTHERS of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise have been accessible... Hong Kong

The relevant lease periods in Hong Kong can be very long (usually 50 years or more) so you are quibbling over semantics, nothing more.

In the past, the government as lessor would issue a Government Lease to the purchaser (usually a developer) (as the lessee). Nowadays, instead, the government executes Conditions of Sale/Exchange/Grant/Re-grant/Extension depending on the purpose of grant. These are contracts giving a conditional right to the purchaser which will be converted to a form of legal ownership upon compliance with all the conditions stipulated. After a successful acquisition of the land, the purchaser (who is usually a developer) will recoup his investment in the construction and make a profit before the term runs out. Once a unit is sold or if the entire building as a whole is sold to a property company, the developer ceases to be involved. The purchasers take its place and they will also be able to sell their leasehold interests later or to assign the right to use to new tenants.


:)
#15068833
ingliz wrote:The relevant lease periods in Hong Kong can be very long (usually 50 years or more) so you are quibbling over semantics, nothing more.

GARBAGE. The principle is completely different, and HK leaseholders know their gravy train will end in the not-too-distant future. HK's land leasing system is far from perfect and the leaseholders are privileged to pocket far too much land rent, but it is much better than private landowning.
#15068920
Truth To Power wrote:
The principle is completely different, and HK leaseholders know their gravy train will end in the not-too-distant future.


Correct, the closer 2047 is and the more totalitarian China is, these lessee are more or less screwed.
#15069002
Truth To Power wrote:
Government is needed to administer possession and use of land when the economy advances beyond the hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding stages, and exclusive use of land is needed to secure the producer's right to property in fixed improvements. In that case, the alternative to government is force.


Truth To Power wrote:
No. Government would merely act as trustee, to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to use the land. Unlike a landlord, a trustee ADMINISTERS possession and use of assets in trust without being either the owner or the beneficiary of those assets.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This is all idealism --



Truth To Power wrote:
That is kinda the point. But it is based on indisputable empirical fact.



I mean 'idealism' in the sense of 'dualism', that you have to invent an ideal dimension, where your imaginings are not attached to real-world dynamics, like that of the human condition / social-reality.

What *you* mean is 'ideal', in the sense of a desired, realistic *goal*.

You're not *providing* any indisputable empirical facts -- merely *claiming* it, without showing any supporting reasoning.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
you seem to think that a trustee / government could be, and remain, perfectly impartial, over all partisan claims to land.



Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. We all know human institutions -- and especially human beings -- are imperfect. The point is to design policies and institutions that have the best chance of yielding the best attainable results. That would be mine.



Which is what, exactly? You're being far from convincing if you can't back up your "alternative" vision for society.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
How would this land trustee government be *composed*? Would it be *voted in*?



Truth To Power wrote:
I definitely favor democratic accountability for public officials. But we are at the point where a lot of what I propose could be automated. Indeed, it won't be too many more decades before the world adopts my proposals anyway, because SAI will tell us it's the only way to avoid being outcompeted and left in the dust of societies that do it first.



These are two different things, though -- democracy is not AI, and AI is not democracy. AI implies a 'technocratic' approach, but it's still elitist because there's no provision for 'buy-in' from the population being affected by it.

So which is it -- will public officials be running the show, ultimately, and accountable to the electorate, as over matters of implementing AI-type recommendations (like driving a car with GPS), or will governance in its entirety somehow be turned over to AI neural networks without any input from the population?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If so, then it would be susceptible to politicking and patronage.



Truth To Power wrote:
As Churchill observed: the worst system -- except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.



Your meaning isn't clear -- your sentence structure here is messed up.

And, you seem to be revealing a certain *pessimism*, regardless. I'm noting that democracy, such as it is, can't simply be substituted-for with a mechanism, because then that's *substitutionism*, whether by AI / automation, politicking, or patronage. The mass political will of the people is what it is, and doesn't *need* to be abstracted, represented, or replaced with political machinery or mechanical machinery.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
How much would it cost to *run* this kind of administration, and how would it be funded?



Truth To Power wrote:
Less than 1% of its revenue would be enough to operate it.



So you're obviously still a nationalist and a capitalist, but you're not describing how this 1% tax would be *collected*. This kind of administration that you favor would have to take power somehow, and then how would it deal with the types in the body politic who complain 'Oh, that's too much', and then they don't pay it?

You're *also* assuming that the continuation of capitalism as your favored form of economics would be *preferable*, and would be worry-free. In fact we know that capitalism has periodic crises, since it's unable to deal with a material / economic *surplus* adequately.

And the global patchwork of nation-states is really not necessary anymore -- how good would this administration of yours be if there was sudden *tension* and even outright (economic-based) *conflict* with other nation-states?

Would a 1% tax be sufficient for rearmament and global capitalist warfare, if that's what things led to?

On the other hand, my own model for a *post-capitalist* material economics does *not* rely on any currency, money, finance, or exchange values (explicit or implicit), *whatsoever*. There are also no abstracted, arbitrary-geographical-entity *national interests* at all, either, because it's not based on *competition*, but instead on *cooperation* at all scales.


Emergent Central Planning

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ckaihatsu wrote:
What kind of powers would it have to curtail and even punish, if some participants became too imposing and aggressive, in relation to others?



Truth To Power wrote:
Common law nuisance provisions should be enough.



Oh, yeah?? You think so?

What if one country was kind of *lagging* in foreign sales, with its exports not really being bought the way it would like? Maybe its quality was basically on-par with the goods of its national rivals, but, for whatever reasons, consumers were gobbling-up *other* brands, from *other* countries, and passing-over *this* country's goods?

This lagging country then decides to *devalue its currency* so that its exports *cost less* in their national currency than its rivals' goods do, in *their* respective currencies. For a time this trick works, and the country sees the sales of its goods increase, but now there's *complaints* and *condemnations* coming from its trade neighbors, who say that this currency trick isn't fair, or correct, and that the country needs to revalue its currency, back to the way it was.

What do you say to *this* capitalism-based scenario, TTP?


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ckaihatsu wrote:
TTP pushes a 'libertarian' idealism, without being able to follow-up on the details.



Truth To Power wrote:
You need to get straight on the basic facts first. Then we can talk about the details, which at the extreme are ultimately for lawyers to work out.



*I* need to 'get straight' on the basic facts?

This is *your* baby -- you're unable to even make your case for the 'vision' that you advocate. Get all the lawyers you want, then tell me what the 'basic facts' are, and what the details are.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
It's dogmatic ideology and salesmanship, that's all.



Truth To Power wrote:
No. It is self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.



*What* are?
#15069003
SolarCross wrote:
The real class divide is: mingy little beasts vs the real champions of the working class, see below.



Just so that you, and others, know -- this is a case of *blaming the victim*.

Sure, productive work roles are good for society and all, but the logical conclusion of *that* mindset is to turn everyone into *robots*.


Humanities - Technology Chart 3.0

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Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
Image



Employer stereotyping of humanities- / philosophy-type college graduates and then not employing them, is certainly less excusable than any stereotyped 'snotty' attitudes (of self-realization achievement) on the part of the college student / graduate.

Also, as technology progresses we have less and less need for engineering-intensive, tool-ish careers since a one-size-fits-all, fully-automated approach becomes more viable and prevalent, like solar and wind power for providing electricity at the point-of-use insteading of using overhead power lines to transport it over vast distances.

Finally, it's only due to *lack* of appropriate technological adoption / implementation that we haven't-had, and don't-have, better, tidier, cleaner approaches to taking care of our material needs, like that for energy or whatever. (Waxworms can be used to eat up plastic waste, etc.)


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ckaihatsu wrote:
You've been critical of rentier-capital-type property rights, but you still haven't proposed your own *alternative* for such -- how *should* privileged assets like land be divvied-up, if not through the real estate markets?



Truth To Power wrote:
Land should be allocated by competitive user bidding in the rental market, but the rent should go to the government and community that create its value, not to private owners who just take the money in return for nothing.



You do realize that you're describing *Stalinism*, right?

So you're *for* nationalization regarding land -- and *all* rentier-type assets? -- but you have to realize that this is societal *dependence* on a specialized standing bureaucracy, which is still a *class* division since this administrating bureaucratic class is *non-productive*. It doesn't produce commodities, workers do, and it will have its own separate organizational interests that are *different* from the interests of the workers, for higher wages, more control of the workplace, etc.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
I've already shown that your status-quo-supporting, nationalist type is *dependent* on the bourgeois government apparatus for 'refereeing' among the private-ownership players,



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. There is no private ownership of land in Hong Kong, so that exception to your rule refutes you: the refereeing between rival prospective private land users does not imply they are owners.



Oh, okay, so *now* you're finally revealing where you're coming from. Okay, well, again, that's *Stalinism* -- it's slightly better than a fucking capitalist free-for-all, but you still have a class division, and overall it's *separatist*, globally.

The reason why I'm a proletarian revolutionist is because only the *working class* has the general collective interest for running society, *across all national boundaries*. The best that your bourgeois-supporting camp can do is this-country-or-that, which means rivalries and *conflicts* with other bourgeois-separatist national entities.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
through my use of the immigration issue (capital is allowed to seek-out better markets around the globe, but *people* are not allowed to cross national borders to seek out better opportunities in the *job* markets).



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I refuted you by pointing out the fact that government is responsible for securing and reconciling the rights of its own citizens, not citizens of other nations.



Right -- and I'm saying, and have said, that this is a global *problem*. You, and anyone else who supports markets and capitalism cannot reconcile your 'free market' ideology, with workers' needs for free-global-*job*-markets, so then it's not really free-markets because national borders take priority over workers international job-seeking in the international jobs market.

I really think that the world is *regressing*, but at a more-globalized level, to be a kind of 'global feudalism', since the international ties are receding, in favor of nationalist / localist retrenchments. It's also telling that you expressed support for the aristocracy, which, in real-world terms, would mean global-bureaucratic-ruling-class elitism, and power, over regular people's lives, which would also happen to cut-*against* your precious free-market ideology and the 'liberty'-supporting use of equity capital.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
And yet you've admitted that capitalism is dependent on the privatization and commodification of *land* (etc.),



Truth To Power wrote:
It [capitalism] is defined as including private ownership of land.



Yes, correct, which is, again, a *problem* -- you just mentioned that:


Truth To Power wrote:
[T]he refereeing between rival prospective private land users does not imply they are owners.



So you're being *contradictory* because on the one hand you're supporting capitalist exchange values (finance), as over land apportionment and valuation, but on the other hand you're saying that *nationalization* of land ownership is preferable to outright-*private* ownership of individual parcels.

I happen to agree that nationalization is a substantial, meaningful *incremental* reform, but it doesn't eliminate capitalism, so you're going to have inter-entity competition *at some level*, and definitely at the *international* level.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
plus I don't hear any concrete proposals from you about any specific *land reforms*. You're more status-quo than anything else, your flashes of contrariness notwithstanding.



Truth To Power wrote:
Then you aren't paying attention. I propose to recover the publicly created rental value of land for public purposes and benefit, and justly to compensate people for the loss of their liberty rights that exclusive land tenure entails.



Well, this is the first post, out of all of the posts we've exchanged so far, in which you're finally outlining actual reforms / plans.

So you basically want to go the way of Venezuela, which does makes sense.

When the Hong Kong protests first got started I took note of the argument made (probably at WSWS) that the next step would have to be for the protestors to broaden the struggle to the working class of *China*, otherwise it would remain a (relatively) *localist* protest and set of nationalist-type interests -- a nationalistic faction, in other words, which really isn't historically-progressive, though I do understand that Hong Kong's economy has slumped dramatically in recent years.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
You're more status-quo than anything else, your flashes of contrariness notwithstanding.



Truth To Power wrote:
It may look status-quo, but it is radically different from both capitalism and socialism.



Not really -- I'll beg to differ with your characterization.

I'm reminded of *this* following diagram that I did:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
So you'd be perfectly content with the *opposite* of land reform, which is the *consolidation* of estates within a nobility-type class.



Truth To Power wrote:
Only if they paid the full rent to the community -- which would make them very much the opposite of a nobility class, because holding the land would TAKE wealth from them rather than GIVING it to them.



Okay, then this *is* land reform -- again I think of Venezuela, and maybe Bolivia to some degree in the past.

Another approach would be to *give* the land to those who would work it, and be productive on it, with the government getting out of the way almost entirely.

The tricky thing with nationalization, but then retaining capitalistic-type valuations, is that the valuations quickly become *arbitrary*, because the valuations are all *internal* to that one country -- why bother when the productivity is intended for domestic consumers anyway? (And then, at that point, you may as well just let the workers be fully in charge of their own productivity, including all assets involved, and let it go internationally instead of artificially constraining it to national boundaries and capitalist valuations.)

(I have a thread in the Socialism section of PoFo called 'global syndicalist currency' that addresses this situation.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It would be a reaction that would overturn the populist gains of the French Revolution.



Truth To Power wrote:
The French revolution failed to liberate people because the revolutionaries were socialists, and refused to learn the lessons the physiocrats had taught.



Again you're not being forthcoming -- what do you mean here?


ckaihatsu wrote:
As I said before, say goodbye to the gains of the American Revolution, to the use of equity capital for industrialized manufactures, and to 'liberty', since you're edging backwards towards feudalism and slavery.



Truth To Power wrote:
That's just more garbage with no basis in fact.



Well, then *refute* it.

Your past vagueness and opaqueness, until this post, where you mentioned nationalization and Hong Kong, enabled me to interpret your politics as being *backward*, in the direction of a nobility- / monarchy- / aristocracy-type consolidation of land and production-goods productivity.

Now that I know you mean *Stalinization*, I will no longer characterize your politics as being reactionary, though it's still *nationalist* and therefore not nearly as historically-progressive as allowing the workers to collectively self-determine society's productivity directly.


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you mean that you're critical of the non-productive financial gains made from rents and interest, as distinct from the commodity-producing gains made by equity capital, by exploiting labor power?



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I am critical of gains made by inflicting artificial scarcity on others, not gains made by RELIEVING scarcity for the BENEFIT of others.

GET IT???



So, to confirm, are you against imperialist warfare? It's imperialist warfare, as in the two bourgeois world wars of the 20th century, that caused artificial scarcity, with the Allies (and all sides) destroying much of the existing infrastructure of the advanced, industrialized economies.

The U.S. benefitted greatly, post-war, and enjoyed an uncharacteristic prosperity from the rebound in economic growth rates as a result of postwar rebuilding contracts, protection-racket-type militaristic global 'security', and the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Of course they do -- a plot of land is discrete, just as a painting is.



Truth To Power wrote:
More disingenuous garbage from you. Why do you refuse to know the fact that land was already there anyway, while a painting had to be produced by labor? Being "discrete" -- whatever you incorrectly imagine that might mean -- has nothing to do with it.



You're forgetting my previous point, from a past post, that land is never used as-is -- land has to be *worked on*, like a painting, for it to be transformed into a useable commodity, which it is.

'Discrete' basically means 'separate', 'individual, and indivisible', like a unit of any product.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Gold is finite / limited in quantity,



Truth To Power wrote:
It must be extracted and refined by labor. Land is already there.



You're not-getting the *economic* point here, which is that rentier-type assets, like land, are *non-productive*. I was trying to confirm acknowledgement of this fact from you.

Your only critique here has to do with the *deflationary* / overvalued characteristic of rentier-type assets, like land.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
and in no case can two different owners own the exact same asset.



Truth To Power wrote:
<sigh> Land is not merely finite but FIXED in supply, so by owning land, the landowner DEPRIVES OTHERS of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise have been accessible.



You're just saying that all rentier-type assets, like land, are discrete in quantity, and I added that, because of this characteristic, they tend to be *deflationary* / overvalued, as a place to park capital.

You're really not saying much, and you're saying it repeatedly. Maybe move on to another point. (!)


Truth To Power wrote:
GET IT???

By contrast, if I mine and refine some gold, that has no effect whatever on any gold others have mined or may want to mine.



Well, what you'd be doing would be *inflationary*, economically speaking. Spain, through its conquests and colonization, did this by bringing back so much gold to Spain that it decreased the value of gold at that time.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
(Think of the claims to the *returns* from such an asset -- rent / interest, and/or capital gains or profits can only go to one owner, for each discrete portion of asset-value, whatever that may happen to be.



Truth To Power wrote:
GET IT???

Why do you refuse to know WHERE THE VALUE COMES FROM?



*All* value comes from human labor, because nothing that we see or use in the social world was made *without* labor.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're just throwing out a dogmatic line without thinking it through.



Truth To Power wrote:
I have thought all this through incomparably better than you or Karl Marx, as I prove every time I waste my valuable time trying to educate you.



All you're *doing* is being emotional and making empty contentions / assertions / claims.

I don't *need* your 'education'. It looks like we're increasingly talking past each other, so these exchanges are getting less and less meaningful.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Hmmmm, you're continuing to be mostly *opaque* with your meanings --



Truth To Power wrote:
No. I am very, very clear: clearer than anyone else you have ever encountered, and certainly orders of magnitude clearer than Karl Marx.



Whatever.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
do you agree, or not, that rentier-type assets like land are *non-productive* because they do not directly produce commodities (which are then bought-and-sold) ?



Truth To Power wrote:
No. Land contributes to production; that is why it yields rent. Hello? It is the land OWNER who does not contribute to production because the land was already there, ready to use, with no help from him or any previous owner.



You're assuming that *all* land has a factory on top of it, which is certainly not the case.

Land is *not* productive of commodities, while the factory *building* *can* be said to contribute to production since it shields the equipment / machinery from rain, etc., and so preserves its equity valuation, and use-function.

I agree that rentier-asset owners are not a part of the commodity-production process.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
*Factories* are also non-human, yet they're considered to be *productive* capital since they / the machinery is directly used in the manufacture of goods-type commodities, through the exploitation of human labor power.



Truth To Power wrote:
GET IT??

Land and factories both contribute to production. But unlike the landowner, the provider of a factory contributes to production because the factory would not otherwise have been there.



Hmmm, you're confusing the capital with the capitalist.

It's the *capital*, in the form of *productive equipment*, like that of a factory, that provides the use-value of 'production', for the manufacture of the resulting goods and services (commodities).

The capitalist, however, only decides on *where* the capital is to be put, in a *managerial*-type role. The capitalist does *not* produce *anything* -- production of commodities is only due to the input of labor power from the wage-workers, the value of which they are exploited for since they do not receive the full value of what the products of their labor are sold for in the market.

All of the capitalists throughout history have not built a single factory -- it's the *workers* who have done that. That's where both asset values *and* equity values come from.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
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---


Truth To Power wrote:
GET IT??



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Hmmmm, I don't think that this is the case.



Truth To Power wrote:
So you are wrong. Shocker.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Consider the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, with the nascent use of water wheels in England -- tapping 'external' sources of power, beyond that of people and animals, is what *technologically* brought us out of feudalism,



Truth To Power wrote:
It was advances in military technology that ended feudalism, not water wheels.



You're being *vague* again -- you're not making your case here.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
and made capital's total size much larger than it was within constrained, monarchical, gold-based nation-states in Europe.



Truth To Power wrote:
That completely misunderstands the development of industrial technology.



No, it's spot-on.

You're *incorrect* to assert that military technology "ended feudalism", though I'd like to hear you try to make your case for that contention.

Industrial technology is simply *much more productive* than what went before it, which was human and animal labor only. Therefore industrial technology created more goods and services, providing much more economic growth (GDP), thereby expanding the money supply and total valuations.

I'll also point out that the *use* of military equipment is inherently *destructive*, and is *not* productive -- it's a form of intra-capitalist (international) *management*, using warfare, which creates artificial scarcity by *destroying* stuff that had already been made by labor.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Serfs were able to escape feudal estates, to towns (later cities), and the economic influence of traveling *merchants* grew tremendously, even rivalling kings and queens.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're not understanding -- human society does *not require* capital for mere food-production -- that could be done with just serfdom / slavery, and *feudal* relations, as has already happened historically.



Truth To Power wrote:
What nonsense. You think feudal food production doesn't require capital?? Capital has been a necessary part of food production since our remote, pre-human ancestors started using stone tools. Indeed, one of the differences between anatomically modern humans and our Neanderthal rivals was the greater complexity of the tool technology associated with the former. We cannot even survive winter outside the tropics without clothing and shelter technology that would be impossible without substantial capital.



Capital didn't even exist until around the 1400s in Italy when banks started issuing bank notes / currency that represented actual gold deposits that the banks held for their customers. This made capital much more liquid, and independent of royal / state oversight over bank deposits.

What you're describing was *before* society first started producing a *surplus*, so it was before the emergence of the class divide (due to human dependence on intentionally grown agricultural *crops*, instead of foraging and hunting, as was done up to then). There *was no* food production then.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
With equity capital, though, and industrialization, and food (etc.) for wage workers, all kinds of goods-and-services *commodities* can be produced, but to increase a workers' own costs -- for food, housing, etc. -- for making their / our labor available, is *profiteering*.



Truth To Power wrote:
"Profiteering" is meaningless Marxist gibberish. The increase in the worker's cost of housing -- actually, of land -- to have access to economic opportunity is rent seeking. It is rent -- returns obtained by depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible -- that is the source of worker exploitation, not profit. Try to get that through your head.



Hmmmm, no, sorry, you're *incorrect* here.

Workers are exploited by *both* rentier-type capital (through rent), *and* by equity capital, which exploits labor's labor-power.

Land and housing are both *commodities* -- that fluctuate in value, and are always non-productive -- so such is a direct *cost* to the laborer, as is food.

So the system of capitalism uses and abuses workers for their labor power, and then doesn't even provide the *means* to labor (food, housing, etc.) on any kind of fair or guaranteed basis -- that's *profiteering*, because that market is *guaranteed* to the capitalist, out of human necessity for the means of life and living.

If you want to moralize, and/or make value judgments, you may want to start with this situation that I just described.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is an excellent illustration of the existence of *class* relations under capitalism since the absence of a standard minimum wage, or 'living wage', again highlights this socially-backward 'profiteering' in addition to the regular, hour-by-hour *exploitation* of workers' labor power, in the commodity-production process.



Truth To Power wrote:
Again, that is nothing but meaningless Marxist gibberish. You will never have anything interesting to say on this topic until you can find a willingness to know the fact that it is the LANDOWNER'S PRIVILEGE that deprives the worker of his liberty, his options, and therefore his bargaining power, placing him in a disadvantageous position vis-a-vis employers and thus impoverishing him, NOT the employer's profit.



You're going *some way*, but you're not going *far enough*, because workers *are* exploited of their labor value during the equity-capital-using process of commodity production.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Let me put it *this* way -- your repeatedly expressed concern has been with the economic costs of *rentier*-based assets, like that of land, to capital.



Truth To Power wrote:
To everyone.



Yes, to capital, and to workers.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Now think of the same *rentier*-based costs, but to the *worker* -- rent for human housing for those laborers, and interest payments made to *non-commodity-producing* wealth that just sits in banks, often covered by the nation-state by increased taxation and/or its increasing of the country's money supply.



Truth To Power wrote:
Yes, I understand those costs incomparably better than you. And your point would be....?



As I've already stated, the costs of rent and interest, to benefit rentier asset holders, is a cost for both equity capital, and for workers.

Despite your repeated complaining you've admitted that capitalism can't function *without* the existence of rentier-type capital, so your complaints ring hollow. Yes, nationalization of rentier assets is a historically-progressive way forward, but it's not a solution, since even nationalization continues to harbor the class divide, and it retains the competitive nation-state global layout.

Once you accept the reality and dynamic of the class divide, you'll have a much better understanding of capitalist productivity, since it's built on *labor exploitation*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, you *are* flip-flopping, because just above, in this same post, you said:



Truth To Power wrote:
No, privilege is any legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. The most important privilege is landowning,



Truth To Power wrote:
That does not contradict anything I said.



Yes, your glorification of landowning (a 'privilege') is contradictory to your *denunciation* of the same, as when you say:


Truth To Power wrote:
is the LANDOWNER'S PRIVILEGE that deprives the worker of his liberty, his options, and therefore his bargaining power, placing him in a disadvantageous position vis-a-vis employers and thus impoverishing him



In other words, if you're *so for* workers' liberty and employment opportunities, why are you *defending* landowning as a valid social practice. Now that I know you're *pro-nationalization* that changes things a bit, but not much because then the workers get exploited by *the state* instead of by private capital ownership.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you consider landowning to be a 'privilege', which is the 'legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation'.



Truth To Power wrote:
Bingo. Thank you for finally consenting to know a fact.



What you're *missing*, though, is that workers are also *exploited* by equity capital, as well as by rentier capital.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You still haven't addressed my prior 'First Cause' argument, which is: Who is entitled to make the first claim of ownership over a previously unclaimed parcel of land, and for what reasons?



Truth To Power wrote:
No one can ever rightly claim ownership of land. Exclusive tenure can only rightly be obtained by making just compensation to the community of those whom you deprive of it.



So, to you, it's 'the community' that has the right to claim ownership of land -- may I take this to mean the *indigenous* population for any given territory?

Now what if there's an influx of impoverished immigrants -- say, from Europe, for example -- who flood into North America escaping poverty and religious persecution. Should the native populations of North America tell those people to turn around and get back on the boats, to return to Europe?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So your position on land ownership is *contradictory* -- either it's [1] a non-commodity-productive 'privilege', initially a land-grab, that deprives others of usage of the same land, or else [2] it is a capitalism-necessary 'enhancement' to industrial production that *deserves* rent-accumulating payments for its private usage.



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. You should know right away that that is not the answer.



Well, which *is* it?? You've made both statements, [1] and [2], and they are *contradictory*.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
That is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality.

I see where you may be having trouble understanding. This is a little bit complicated.

Private landowning is necessary to capitalism by definition, which is why I oppose capitalism, not because it is an enhancement to industrial production. It actually harms industrial production by forcing producers to subsidize landowners. However, pre-private-landowning arrangements such as non-exclusive use, common ownership, customary clan landholding, etc. are even worse than private landowning, because at least the private landowner has a financial incentive to allocate the land to whoever is most productive, and can thus afford to pay him the most rent. The geoist system I advocate enjoys the best of both worlds: the productive efficiency of market allocation to the high-bidding private users, but without the parasitism and forced subsidization of paying private landowners rent for doing nothing.



Okay, I understand your 'nationalization' position, but my critique of that reform stands, as I've outlined it previously. You need to deal with the reality that equity capital also exploits labor, and that the class divide exists, even after nationalization.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
that *deserves* rent-accumulating payments for its private usage.



Truth To Power wrote:
The COMMUNITY deserves the rent for private usage because it CREATES the land's value and secures the user's exclusive tenure.



(I'll have to wait to see if you mean 'the community' = 'the indigenous population'.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you pro-land-capital, or anti-land-capital?



Truth To Power wrote:
Meaningless. Land and capital are non-overlapping.



Yes, they *are* overlapping, because anyone can take cash and buy the commodity of *land* / rentier capital, for collecting rents and interest, and/or the commodity of *equity capital* (investments), for receiving capital gains and dividends.

I understand now that you're for nationalization, but that still leaves the *labor* issue, since national administration is *non-productive* of commodities (goods and services).


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're again being contradictory --



Truth To Power wrote:
NO I AM NOT, and I will thank you to remember it.



Save your thanks -- you're being contradictory. Here's this segment again:


ckaihatsu wrote:
So your position on land ownership is *contradictory* -- either it's [1] a non-commodity-productive 'privilege', initially a land-grab, that deprives others of usage of the same land, or else [2] it is a capitalism-necessary 'enhancement' to industrial production that *deserves* rent-accumulating payments for its private usage.



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. You should know right away that that is not the answer.



Well, which *is* it?? You've made both statements, [1] and [2], and they are *contradictory*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
is land / asset ownership to be defined in terms of asset value (exchange value), or isn't it?



Truth To Power wrote:
No, the land's exchange value is derived from the privilege of ownership: it is basically how much more the market expects the owner to take from the community by owning the land than he will pay in taxes on it.



Okay, so you're definitely fine with land / asset ownership being defined in terms of exchange values, since such assets are commodities, and are readily bought-and-sold on markets.

Now how do you reconcile this belief with your stated endorsement of *nationalization*?

Land -- and perhaps other assets as well -- would be *de-privatized*, because it would be controlled by the state, and no one could *own* land any more. Everyone would be *tenants* of land, to the single owner, the state.

So which *is* it -- is the state the single owner, or would land continue to have exchange value, as on the markets, and bought-and-sold?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, I understand that there's *use value* that goes with land ownership,



Truth To Power wrote:
No. The use value comes from secure, exclusive tenure, not ownership. See Hong Kong.



You're misunderstanding -- both state ownership *and* private ownership of an asset contain the characteristic of *use value*. The state could use land for a government building, or a private owner could use land to build a factory on (etc.).


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
namely for hosting productive machinery (a factory), but if all that matters is this land-use-value (for hosting equity-type-capital-based values, productive goods) then why are you content to allow land to both be a 'privilege',



Truth To Power wrote:
That's NOT all that matters, and it is OWNING land that is the privilege, not land. See the definition of privilege.



ckaihatsu wrote:
*and* to also value it in terms of *exchange* value (asset value), like any other commodity?



Truth To Power wrote:
Its rental value is necessary to efficient allocation. Not its exchange value. See above. Land's exchange value is nothing but a measure of the injustice of private landowning.



This is getting weird -- you're critical of the "privilege" of rentier asset ownership, which is just a simple purchase, the same as for purchasing equity capital, and you want rentier assets to all be nationalized, but then you're okay with continuing the *function* of nationalized rentier asset ownership, which is to draw rent payments from tenants, as for the use of land.

So you're content to continue the *practice* of rental values, to fulfill the function of efficient allocation (according to the rental market of exchange-value valuations).

So you see 'injustice' as being that of private landowning, while 'justice' for the same would simply be nationalization, while still charging rent to those who need to use land, for whatever reason -- ?

This is almost akin to *corporatization*, since you're just calling for a larger-scale organization of the exact same economic function. Yes, there would be efficiencies of scale, but then it would be the *nation*, or the *corporation*, with the privilege of land / asset ownership, and everyone else would have no other option but to lease from the nation or the corporation.

This is why I've termed this approach to be backward and feudal-like because all of those who weren't privileged by not-owning land *before* would *still* be not-privileged by not-owning, and would be forced to make rent payments for housing, or for the activation of equity capital, for manufacturing and profit-making.

So instead of being any kind of land-reform, this is now starting to sound more like a nationalist, elitist kind of profiteering through monopolization. Would the national administration really be able to outmaneuver the markets, and drive prices down, like Walmart, or would it become corrupt with power and impose a Stalinistic kind of industrial slavery over everyone?

This is why I don't think we can find a resolution at the *national*, or even *multi-national corporate* level -- it should be resolved on a *class* basis, since the working class exists in *all* countries, and could provide both labor *and* collective self-administration over all work roles, without any specialized, class-like bureaucratic overhead.

I'm stopping now and will get to the remainder of your post soon.
#15069006
ckaihatsu wrote:Just so that you, and others, know -- this is a case of *blaming the victim*.

Sure, productive work roles are good for society and all, but the logical conclusion of *that* mindset is to turn everyone into *robots*.

I think you will find that middle class tossers just have too much class consciousness. They are "victims" of their own stupid selves. Fact is for the better half of the working classes to go up, the worst half of the middle classes have to go down, relatively speaking. Most of these dregs go to college only because they want to stay in the same "middle class" their parents achieved (often without a college degree). The reality is they are just fooling themselves because they did not inherit the talent or grit that their parents had and their proper place is working in bars, stacking shelves, making coffee and cleaning toilets. None of those things require a $100k education in gender-queer studies.

You apparently can not do logic either, btw.
#15069011
SolarCross wrote:
I think you will find that middle class tossers just have too much class consciousness. They are "victims" of their own stupid selves. Fact is for the better half of the working classes to go up, the worst half of the middle classes have to go down, relatively speaking. Most of these dregs go to college only because they want to stay in the same "middle class" their parents achieved (often without a college degree). The reality is they are just fooling themselves because they did not inherit the talent or grit that their parents had and their proper place is working in bars, stacking shelves, making coffee and cleaning toilets. None of those things require a $100k education in gender-queer studies.

You apparently can not do logic either, btw.



Yup, you're definitely sounding 'workerist' now -- by myopically focusing on the individual, in the mode of work, you're missing-out on the *bigger picture*, which is how a society happens to produce its goods and services (commodities), and who *benefits* from this production.

You, like TTP, are oblivious to the *class* divide -- yes, there's a 'middle class', but it's not really a 'class', because it's wedged somewhere in-between those who direct society's production (the ruling class), and those who do the actual work to implement those ruling class policies (the working class).

Your grasp on capitalist economics *sucks* -- again, you're *blaming the victim* for what's actually a crisis of the *system*. Why should so many people be suffering in such an advanced technological age? We should all be living Jetsons kinds of lifestyles, yet people are either chronically unemployed or are working their asses to the bone, all because of how society is *structured*.

Here's a reminder:


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

Spoiler: show
Image
#15069012
Pants-of-dog wrote:If your weird hypothesis was correct, this would be due to the fact that Christian Europeans had more rights than Jews. This is not the case, and these episodes of violent discrimination happened precisely because Christian Europeans did not grant Jews the same rights as everyone else.

Its amazing how just such a bare faced lie should become established truth. Jews had immense privileges in Medieval Europe. Jews had the right to believe pretty much what they wanted. Everyone else had to conform or die. Odinists were exterminated. Everyone else had to believe in Christian globalism, Jews were allowed to teach their children that they were the master race, ordained by God, that everyone else was Goy untermensch. This gave them a huge advantage in the life and death competition for survival and reproduction in Medieval societies.

These racist, disdainful, hateful attitudes made the Jews excellent intermediaries for the ruling elite. in exploiting the common Gentile. Jews had huge privileges but they couldn't rise to the very top while remaining Jews, this meant that they didn't threaten to overthrow the elite, which was always the threat of intermediary groups. Elements of the middle class were always threatening to replace the ruling elite.
Last edited by Rich on 22 Feb 2020 17:20, edited 1 time in total.
#15069021

The crusades were a series of religious wars in Europe and western Asia initiated, supported and sometimes directed by the Catholic Church between the 11th and the 17th centuries. The crusades differed from other religious conflicts in that participants considered them a penitential exercise that brought absolution. Historians contest the definition of the term "crusade" with some restricting it to armed pilgrimages to Jerusalem; others including all Catholic military campaigns with a promise of spiritual benefits; all Catholic holy wars; or those with characteristic religious fervour. The most well known are those fought against the Muslims of the eastern Mediterranean for the Holy Land between 1096 and 1271. Crusades were also fought from the 12th century against the Iberian Moors, the Ottoman Empire and in several other regions. The reasons for thesse included fighting pagans, the suppression of heresy and conflict between Catholic groups.



Two years later [after 1144] Pope Eugenius III called for a second crusade. Bernard of Clairvaux spread the message that the loss was the result of sinfulness. Simultaneously, the anti-Semitic preaching of the Cistercian monk, Rudolf, initiated more massacres of Jews in the Rhineland.[63] This was part of a general increase in crusading activity, including in the Iberian peninsular and northern Europe.[64]



Religion prevented assimilation evidenced by the Franks' discriminatory laws against Jews and Muslims. They were banned from living in Jerusalem and sexual relationship between Muslims and Christians was punished by mutilation. Some mosques were converted into Christian churches, but the Franks did not force the local Muslims to convert to Christianity. Frankish lords were particularly reluctant, because conversion would have ended the Muslim peasants' servile status. The Muslims could pray in public and their pilgrimages to Mecca continued.[151] The Samaritans' annual Passover festival attracted visitors from beyond the kingdom's borders.[152]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
#15069129
ckaihatsu wrote:Yup, you're definitely sounding 'workerist' now -- by myopically focusing on the individual, in the mode of work, you're missing-out on the *bigger picture*, which is how a society happens to produce its goods and services (commodities), and who *benefits* from this production.

You, like TTP, are oblivious to the *class* divide -- yes, there's a 'middle class', but it's not really a 'class', because it's wedged somewhere in-between those who direct society's production (the ruling class), and those who do the actual work to implement those ruling class policies (the working class).

Your grasp on capitalist economics *sucks* -- again, you're *blaming the victim* for what's actually a crisis of the *system*. Why should so many people be suffering in such an advanced technological age? We should all be living Jetsons kinds of lifestyles, yet people are either chronically unemployed or are working their asses to the bone, all because of how society is *structured*.

They are not victims just stupid.
#15069282
ckaihatsu wrote:
I think you're actually running-up against the inherent contradiction between exchange values, and use values --



Truth To Power wrote:
I prefer to be accurate, and distinguish value -- what a thing would trade for -- from utility -- its capacity to satisfy human desires.



You're acting like 'price' is synonymous with 'capacity to satisfy human desires', and that's actually *not* what price represents -- it has to also represent the *additional* variable of *speculation*, which is the expectation by some that the price will keep going higher due to mass desire simply for a *higher price*, for the sake of making capital gains.

So 'price' is inherently overextended as an economic variable, and cannot be seen to be a simple measurement of demand for the commodity that's attached to it.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
if land becomes a commodity sheerly for *speculation*, as it often does, then its counterpart *use value* is eclipsed, and the cost of hosting the factory (rent payments) becomes much greater, with no accompanying increase in actual productivity of the commodity goods and services that the factory produces.



Truth To Power wrote:
Right. That is what happens when the rent is available for private appropriation.



You mean 'when the *land* is available for private appropriation'.

But even if the real estate market gets *nationalized*, the same economics would be in place, namely that rental prices would vary over geography and would *fluctuate*, all without adding any value to the finished product, if a commodity-productive factory or other workplace happened to be leasing that plot of land.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Economically this is a *reactionary*, *backward* dynamic, on the trajectory towards feudalism, since the bourgeois politics of the day then defends this rentier faction of capital even though rentier capital / land is *non-commodity-productive*. Why should the commodity-productive portion of the economy have to endure greater productive costs to its *equity* capital, passed along to the consumer (for possibly life-necessary goods and services), when such costs are based on an asset, land, that doesn't directly add-into / increase / enhance the commodity-productive process?



Truth To Power wrote:
If I understand what you are asking here, it shouldn't. Land rent is a cost, but it does not ADD to production costs because it is the cost of obtaining an economic advantage -- i.e., the cost of equivalently reducing other costs.



What exactly are these 'other costs' that you're mentioning?

If the buyer uses that land for hosting *productive goods* (a factory), then that's money that's had to be paid before the factory can begin producing commodities for sale. It's a cost of production, but the land itself, as an asset, is not *itself* productive.

(See the 'constant capital' section of the following graphic -- it shows that infrastructure like land rental, finance, and taxes are all *costs* to business, or equity capital.)


[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit

Spoiler: show
Image



Truth To Power wrote:
That is why the private landowner's claim to the rent is superficially plausible: the land user doesn't really lose anything by paying the rent -- indeed he pays it willingly. The problem is that
1. the user (and everyone else) has been deprived of their liberty to use the land without just compensation so that the private landowner can get something for nothing; and
2. the land's value comes mainly from desirable public services and infrastructure paid for with other people's taxes. I.e., the land user must pay for government twice so that the landowner can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing.



You're being contradictory again -- if the person or entity leasing the land is having to pay that rent, then that's a *cost* to their business (or personhood, for a worker). It *doesn't matter* if they like to pay rent or *don't* like to pay rent -- it's still a cost either way.

The private landowner, with the rentier capital in the form of that land, owns a business and that land-owning business will have costs associated with *it*, such as the upkeep of the land or grounds, or possibly also a building on those grounds, but I agree that the private landowner is essentially getting something -- rent payments -- for nothing, which is just the simple ownership and maintenance of what's being rented.

On your point number 2, you're *wrong* -- you're conflating the private sector with the public sector (government), and they are *not* related in the way that you're describing. They're apples-and-oranges in this context.

The market value of any given rentier-type asset comes from supply-and-demand, after nationalist imperialist militarism has been used by the government to seize that land from some previous owner or resident, as we've seen happen in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, particularly.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's the crux of it, in this segment -- is society to consider rentier capital / land as actually being commodity-productive, or not?



Truth To Power wrote:
Land aids production. The private landowner does not. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.



But not all land hosts productive goods (factories).

If a commodity-producing factory / workplace could exist somewhere *without* having to physically be on some plot of real estate / land -- as perhaps in outer space -- then it could function as it otherwise would, and would produce the commodities that it does. The land itself, which is typically necessary due to gravity (actually electrostatic force), is physically *not necessary* for the commodity-productive process to take place. Therefore land -- and *all* rentier-type assets -- is *not* commodity-productive. It is not an input to commodity production.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, the landowner charges rent for the land's use-value, but can that land really be termed 'materially productive', or not?



Truth To Power wrote:
Why else would the user be willing to pay rent for it??



Again, it's not about the renter's *willingness* to pay rent, or not -- it's the *law* under bourgeois hegemony, which upholds private property rights. A worker who needs a home to come home to, or a business that needs a location for its business, are *compelled* to pay rent if they can't own or mortgage that real estate outright.

And, again, not all land hosts productive goods, so any land -- as for housing, for example, is *definitely* non-productive -- it does not serve as an input to any kind of commodity-producing process.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This isn't a groupthink-political term -- this is an objective, impartial material analysis that's either right or wrong. Is rentier capital / land actually materially productive, in the same way that the machinery of a factory is, or isn't it -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
It indisputably is, as the explanation of Ricardian rent makes clear. It's the rentier that is not materially productive.



No, it isn't -- I'll repeat that if the actually-productive equipment could be located *without* requiring real estate, then it would still be as productive of commodities as if it *were* situated on land. Maybe it's a floating home office, somewhere on the ocean, or is a materials lab in a space station in low earth orbit.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The Marxist definition, of course, is that it's *not*, that the land does not contribute to the production of commodities -- and I walked through the example of land *speculation* in the prior segment, which is an illustration of capitalism's inherent contradiction between *exchange values* and *use values*.



Truth To Power wrote:
That was utterly beside the point. The fact that people can speculate in the privilege of owning land doesn't affect land's necessary role in production. You don't seem able to comprehend that land is not landowning.



But, as I've just shown, land *isn't* an input to commodity-production. Commodity production *can* take place *without* land.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So, to confirm, you're saying that, yes, the privilege of privately owning land / rentier-capital, is a yoke on liberty?



Truth To Power wrote:
Yes, given the correct definition of rent.



Okay, and is land / rentier-capital a yoke on liberty because it privatizes portions of land, and is a cost to equity capital (and to wages) ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
(Because liquid capital cannot go to *both* of two destinations at once -- it cannot both go to rentier capital / land as a rent payment, *and* also go into equity stocks in the interests of making a return on that investment.)



Truth To Power wrote:
THAT'S NOT THE REASON!!!



Yes, that *is* the reason, whether you agree with it or not.

Take another look at that 'Business' graphic -- there are two types of costs to business / equity capital: constant capital, and variable capital.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Uh-huh. Fun. You still need to clarify whether rentier capital / land is commodity-productive, or not.



Truth To Power wrote:
I have been very clear. It is the concept of something being "commodity-productive" or not that obscures the truth.



No, you *haven't* been clear about whether rentier capital / land is commodity-productive, or not. Yes or no.

'Productive', in the context of capitalism, means that *commodities* are being produced. 'Commodity-productive' is a valid term, meaning the production of goods and/or services.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I've already shown you to be *hypocritical* with this statement of yours,



Truth To Power wrote:
No, you have not.



ckaihatsu wrote:
because you're content to allow *non*-free-markets when it comes to workers in the international job markets -- you favor your nationalist regulated *closed borders* over any 'free market' in the jobs market.



Truth To Power wrote:
I don't have a strong position either way on that, though I think democratically accountable sovereign governments have a right to restrict immigration. Free markets can only apply within national borders, because they are reliant on government to secure the relevant property, liberty, and contract rights.



If 'free markets' can only take place *within* national boundaries, then they're not really 'free' markets.

What if someone were to come along and say that they're for *international markets* -- ? What should we call *those* markets and trade ties, then? 'Freer' markets?

International markets have been around since -- probably -- the invention of paper money back in the 1400s, at least, and really took off in the 1500s with the first European exploratory, and later colonizing, voyages.

It's a small step to say that these international markets exist for *jobs*, too -- employment -- and so the workers *seeking* those economic opportunities (which you've previously said you support) should have free-markets across any and all national boundaries, to find those economic opportunities.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
And both of you refuse to know the fact that the factory owner has no power to do anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity that would not otherwise be accessible, while the landowner has only the power to DEPRIVE the worker of access to economic opportunity that WOULD otherwise be accessible.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, I already know that land rental itself does not confer any economic advantage to the worker -- you're making my argument *for* me that land / rentier capital is *not productive* because it is only a *cost* to either (equity) capital, to workers' inherent human needs for life and living, or both.



Truth To Power wrote:
It is not only a cost, because the user is only willing to pay the cost because it confers an equivalent advantage.



Okay, here it is -- now you're being *contradictory*:


Truth To Power wrote:
[T]he landowner has only the power to DEPRIVE the worker of access to economic opportunity that WOULD otherwise be accessible.
[/quote]

Truth To Power wrote:
[T]he user is only willing to pay the cost [of rent] because it confers an equivalent advantage.



In other words, you're saying that the practice of private-property land ownership upholds *scarcity* because of the inherently limited-geography aspect of land / real estate. It's inherently *deflationary* / overvalued, and I happen to agree.

But then you're *contradicting* that statement of yours by saying that land rental confers some kind of 'equivalent advantage', which we both know is *not true*. Paying rent, either for housing or for a business site, is a *cost*, and it does *not* confer any 'liberty'-type advantage to make gains, as is done with *employment*, or *equity* capital, respectively.

You *know* that land itself (rentier capital) is *not* productive, as is crystal-clear with the example of housing.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so then, given this, where do you stand on the economic process / dynamic of *privatization*?



Truth To Power wrote:
It is probably a good idea where the benefits of competition are available, but has been widely applied where they are not, such as natural resources and natural monopolies.



Then, how, in your way of thinking about all of this, is a society to objectively distinguish between those sectors of the economy which should remain *competitive* (privatized), and those which should *not* (state-controlled, as should be the case for natural resources and natural monopolies) ?

The state bureaucracy has a caste-like interest in taking over more 'turf', for regulatory control, though it's been losing ground in the real world to *private* interests for greater private accumulation and *less* state regulation over financial matters.

Your political viewpoint has *no authority*, or even a plan, for how to balance out the bourgeois-internal realms of private-versus-state -- in actuality the bourgeois state basically gets stuck with any sectors that *aren't* self-sustaining, or *can't* be, like transportation infrastructure, education, regulation, governance, etc.

Anywhere that *private* bourgeois interests *can* exploit and squeeze profits out, it does, looking more 'successful' than the dreary, stodgy state sector which has to play 'clean-up' in the aftermath of private-sector pillaging and fuck-fests.

You, being a libertarian / liberal, have *zero* way-forward out of this status-quo morass.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If some asset, like an oil extraction facility, happens to be *state-owned*, then should it remain that way, or should it be *privatized*?



Truth To Power wrote:
It is the natural resource that should not be privatized. The extraction machinery is neither a natural resource nor a natural monopoly. Benefits of competition are available via privatization.



Now you're being contradictory again because you've just called for *nationalization* (de-privatization) of anything that can't be handled through private-sector-type competition (markets).

The premise is that some oil extraction facility is *already* state-owned -- it's machinery that's stuck to *one location*, being the state equivalent of *real estate*. Yes, workers have already worked to *produce* that machinery, but it was done for the *state*, and not for private capital.

How should the resulting petroleum be handled economically / societally, if it's to be considered a natural resource / natural monopoly?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Should *many more* assets be 'de-privatized' and returned to general, common usage, as through nationalization?



Truth To Power wrote:
That depends on the asset. We can see the horrible effects of nationalizing the oil industry in Venezuela, but the benefits of retaining natural resources in public ownership in Norway, Alaska, etc.



Now you're sounding *biased* -- if oil happens to be nationalized in Venezuela, and also in Norway, Alaska, and other places, then *what's the difference*?

Either you have the political principle of de-privatizing *all* natural resources / land / rentier assets / natural monopolies, or you don't.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, from this same post:



Truth To Power wrote:
[Land value and function] is UNDER-rated, and being DEPRIVED of it without just compensation is a yoke on liberty.


Truth To Power wrote:
Its advantages definitely enhance industrial production.



Truth To Power wrote:
Where is the contradiction? You are still not understanding that land is not landowning.



There are *multiple* errors going on here, with what you've said.

The *first* error is about land 'enhancing industrial production'. It *doesn't*, as I've described previously in this post -- commodity-production doesn't physically *require* land, it's just that it typically is *stuck* having to rent it.

The *second* error / contradiction is with your stated *attitude* towards land, economically -- here you're saying that land is not landowning, yet you have no problem with private property / land being subject to market valuations, perhaps under nationalized administration. (This presumably encompasses *all* land, making the state the owner / controller of all land whether it's currently under private ownership or not.)

Third, who should 'compensation' be paid to, exactly, for any given private-property -- or state -- ownership and control of such land?

Here's what you've said about it previously:


ckaihatsu wrote:
You still haven't addressed my prior 'First Cause' argument, which is: Who is entitled to make the first claim of ownership over a previously unclaimed parcel of land, and for what reasons?



Truth To Power wrote:
No one can ever rightly claim ownership of land. Exclusive tenure can only rightly be obtained by making just compensation to the community of those whom you deprive of it.



(I still have to wait for your reply to see if you mean an *indigenous* 'community'.)


---


Truth To Power wrote:
while the landowner has only the power to DEPRIVE the worker of access to economic opportunity that WOULD otherwise be accessible.



I think I'm finally beginning to understand what you mean with this oft-repeated vague statement of yours -- since you think that land is an input to the commodity-production process of capitalism, you think that the increasing fencing-off / ownership of land / real estate *decreases* the total global amount of value-availability to the proletarian, or worker.

But here's the thing -- land itself is *not* commodity-productive. Sure, some people are still farmers (2% in the U.S.), and people could still conceivably do subsistence farming, given affordable land for such.

But what you're not realizing is that this ideology of yours is *anachronistic*, and is *not* liberty. No one should *have* to, much-less *want* to, live this way, stuck on a farm, at the mercy of the elements and supply vendors, and outside of modern city life.

A typical worker these days is *not* looking for 'land opportunity', to make exchange value / money from *farming*. Modern life revolves around *wages* for the worker, which is typically found in *cities*, at regular office-type jobs. With sufficient wages workers these days can just *buy* their food, and can buy other, more leisurely, kinds of things as well.

Your entire libertarian ideology is *retro*, and not in a cool, hipster, cultural way, but in a backwards-material kind of way. You'll thank me later.
#15069283
SolarCross wrote:
They are not victims just stupid.



Your socio-political kind, SC, has *no conception* of 'context', for *anything*.

There could be hurricanes, and tornados, and earthquakes, and fires going on somewhere, all at the same time, and yet you'd still be finger-pointing in the midst of it, at everyone, telling them how 'stupid' they all are, and that it's *them* who caused this destruction.

Likewise, we don't live in anything *near* a perfect world, so when people come along to describe what the ongoing problems are, all you do is whip the camera around to point at them, saying that they're the problem because they're not happy in this perfect world.
#15069299
ckaihatsu wrote:Your socio-political kind, SC, has *no conception* of 'context', for *anything*.

There could be hurricanes, and tornados, and earthquakes, and fires going on somewhere, all at the same time, and yet you'd still be finger-pointing in the midst of it, at everyone, telling them how 'stupid' they all are, and that it's *them* who caused this destruction.

Likewise, we don't live in anything *near* a perfect world, so when people come along to describe what the ongoing problems are, all you do is whip the camera around to point at them, saying that they're the problem because they're not happy in this perfect world.


Not true, but you can not do anything about the context, you can only do something about yourself. If you can not fix yourself then you will have no chance fixing the world. Anyone who fails this basic observation is functionally stupid.
#15069302
SolarCross wrote:
Not true, but you can not do anything about the context, you can only do something about yourself. If you can not fix yourself then you will have no chance fixing the world. Anyone who fails this basic observation is functionally stupid.



I appreciate the thought here, SC, but this topic of 'self-and-society' (for lack of a better term) does not have a one-or-the-other kind of solution to it.

I'll put all my cards out on the table as well, with a diagram (of course), to say that there's always a *complex interplay* among these four concentric 'zones' that I've identified, according to scope:


Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image



I happened to have recently said the same to TTP, at this post:


ckaihatsu wrote:
We all exist within a number of enveloping 'layers' -- if-you-will -- the outermost is *nature* / natural reality, since all life on earth evolved out of organic chemicals that were already here. Within this natural layer is 'objective social reality', meaning all regular social institutions that tend to last beyond a single person's lifetime and that have great social impact / influence on people's lives in general (say, government, for example).

Now within *that* 'layer' is *subjective social reality*, and this will vary person-by-person, since people live in various geographic and social locations. Those that a person interacts with on a regular basis will be those of the 'subjective social reality', along with more-formal, but individually particular, interactions with the larger 'objective social reality'.

Finally we can also view the individual *individually* -- the 'individuality / subjectivity' layer.



viewtopic.php?p=15066935#p15066935
#15069577
ingliz wrote:China is a socialist state (Two-stage revolutionary theory).

No, of course it isn't. China was socialist during the Mao regime, and suffered the associated tyranny, poverty, oppression, mega-death famine, and economic stagnation. Deng decisively moved China away from socialism beginning in the late 1970s by enabling private ownership of production goods. Once China abandoned the stupid, anti-economic and destructive system of socialism -- but unlike the XSSR did not embrace capitalism by privatizing land -- it quickly moved towards achieving its economic potential, with consistent double-digit growth. Like Hong Kong before it, China proves the economic superiority of a geoist model -- private ownership of production goods but public ownership of land -- over capitalism and socialism even when it is very imperfectly applied, and still permits private appropriation of substantial land rents.
#15069580
Truth To Power wrote:No, of course it isn't

"Left-Wing" Communism is an infantile disorder. China is an orthodox Marxist-Leninist socialist state.

The goal of Marxism–Leninism is the revolutionary transformation of a capitalist state into a socialist state by way of two-stage revolution.

Lenin argued that in any "backward country" in which there exist the objective conditions for a "general peasant revolution" (a revolution which unites all the different strata within the peasantry), the aims and tasks of this general peasant revolution do not go beyond the framework of bourgeois relations of production and that, without a "series of transitional stages" it cannot be transformed into a socialist revolution.

A general peasant revolution is still a bourgeois revolution, and that without a series of transitions, of transitional stages, it cannot be transformed into a socialist revolution in a backward country.

Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918)


:)
#15069631
SolarCross wrote:Not true, but you can not do anything about the context, you can only do something about yourself.

Then what is voting for?
If you can not fix yourself then you will have no chance fixing the world.

Wrong. Many people who have not been able to fix themselves have revolutionized the world. Isaac Newton was a very difficult person who had trouble relating to other people, wasted years of his life on absurd religious nonsense, and almost certainly died a virgin, yet he made modern civilization possible.
Anyone who fails this basic observation is functionally stupid.

Anyone who tells victims of evil to blame themselves instead of the perpetrator is functionally evil.
#15069637
ingliz wrote:"Left-Wing" Communism is an infantile disorder.

It's the only way to be communist. The left is egalitarian, the right elitist, so communism is inherently left wing.
China is an orthodox Marxist-Leninist socialist state.

After such an absurd claim, nothing you say can be taken seriously.
The goal of Marxism–Leninism is the revolutionary transformation of a capitalist state into a socialist state by way of two-stage revolution.

Nope. Marx said socialism was the intermediate stage on the way to communism.
Lenin argued that in any "backward country" in which there exist the objective conditions for a "general peasant revolution" (a revolution which unites all the different strata within the peasantry), the aims and tasks of this general peasant revolution do not go beyond the framework of bourgeois relations of production and that, without a "series of transitional stages" it cannot be transformed into a socialist revolution.

But in both Russia and China, the revolution clearly was socialist. It just inevitably failed. Russia abandoned socialism for capitalism, but China much more wisely and successfully abandoned socialism for geoism.
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