[fuser]

Shouldn't we just try and get along? If centuries of bloodshed completely fails to force hegemonic adherence to an ideology and that hegemonic adherence is an impossibility by any means, then why bother?

Are you still bowing to your feudal lords? No, right? As they were thrown into the dustbin of history and liberal hegemony was established.

Shouldn't we just try and get along? If centuries of bloodshed completely fails to force hegemonic adherence to an ideology and that hegemonic adherence is an impossibility by any means, then why bother?

you sound like a beauty pageant contestant.

[SolarCross]

Are you still bowing to your feudal lords? No, right? As they were thrown into the dustbin of history and liberal hegemony was established.

I don't bow to them but they still exist, in Britain we still have Barons, Dukes, Earls and of course the Queen. If they went into the dustbin of history, nobody seems to have told them.

you sound like a beauty pageant contestant.

Cheers, I assure you I don't look like one.

[fuser]

Sorry, I keep forgetting that you are British, seeing that you are a libertarian, I always assume you to be American.

But c'mon man, you have to admit, those titles are mere symbolic and you are not living in a feudal society. If we ridiculously oversimplify everything, then there is no difference between anything. Capitalism, Communism or catholic, protestant, they all are same but let's not go down to that route. Liberal capitalist hegemony did destroyed feudal world order as in historical fact.

[Pants-of-dog]

The added value (product's price minus resources' price) per capita and per year in the US is 50k$ (35k€). This means that with an equal distribution of wealth you could spend no more than 50k$ per year, minus your contribution to public services. This contribution typically amounts to 30% to 50% of the added value. [b]So in an equalitarian state with socialized medicine and such, you would find yourself with no more than 25k$ (15k€) per capita and per year[b], provided that the added value generated would stay the same (which is unlikely - greed is a powerful drive and collectivization a less efficient organization - sometimes greatly inefficient).

If that's all it cost me to get rid of private ownership over the means of production, I would take that pay cut. The savings in terms of ensuring my children get good schools and hospitals would more than make up for it.

[SolarCross]

But c'mon man, you have to admit, those titles are mere symbolic and you are not living in a feudal society. If we ridiculously oversimplify everything, then there is no difference between anything. Capitalism, Communism or catholic, protestant, they all are same but let's not go down to that route. Liberal capitalist hegemony did destroyed feudal world order as in historical fact.

Am I not? The aristos mostly still have their great estates and even still employ some people under terms not so wildly different from the past. The over-simplification is yours by saying "Liberal capitalist hegemony did destroy the feudal world order as in historical fact.". The old feudalism lost dominance, but didn't altogether disappear. In some respects the welfare state is a kind of national feudalism and when you see it that light it looks as if this neo-feudalism is actually dominant now and laissez faire capitalism is "on the ropes with a bloodied face". Even when (ye olde style) feudalism was dominant it wasn't total domination, the people of the market, what you would call the bourgoisie, here and there managed to maintain some independence of feudal relations as did the people of the church. Some merchant associations were very large and powerful such as the Hanseatic League.

Welfare statism is dominant in the west now, but still there are people operating quite independently of it. In Britain we have the "travellers", gypos and pikies. Most of them pay virtually no tax and use very little of the welfare states "benefits". Then you have the jet set, people who employ convoluted accounting judo to defend themselves from the predations of the welfare statists and of course they don't use the benefits of the national plantations' "services" either. I suspect the churches maintain a good deal of independance still too as do many of the secular charities. Other people are totally owned by the state and can't even conceive of existence independent of its policies much less do it.

Communism at best might dominate some place for some time but total hegemony is impossible.

[KPres]

* Only remains the third part: what is currently spent in big houses and luxury goods for executives and stockholders. The manpower currently used to produce those goods could be used to profit to your workers instead. But it only amounts to a few percents of the added value! And it is likely that your new system will hurt the efficiency more than this.

Plus, this will never be redistributed anyway. It will just end up in the hands of the high-ranking members whatever political party ends up in power.

[The Immortal Goon]

Do you mean that you do not understand or are not sure about what it means, that you do not think it is true, or that you do understand it and think it is true but would prefer another semantic?
We can replace "efficiency" by "hour productivity".

Neither, in honesty, I just see no reason to assume that a communist society is, "likely less efficient."

It does not matter for the argument I was defending. I was insisting on the fact that those spendings do not depend on capitalism. Whether they are materialized by tickets, currency, onions or free worked hours, and controlled by a government, collective or some magical owl does not matter.

I generally try to avoid getting too specific as I'm an advocate of the system of analysis more than anything, non-communists coming into this forum are almost always just trolling and not actually interested, and the "wall of text" tend to turn people off, but we have a whole system for this in the transition from capitalism to communism. I will sum up afterwards should you desire to skip it.

Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution?

To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase "fair distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together. The latter presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor are common property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated, and from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

...Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

...The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear altogether.

This is, so I understand, what you're questioning.

...What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

And finally, this is what is important about the distinction between socialism (Marx writing about this above) and communism, which has no government:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

And so this is the basic thrust; the issues you bring up are valid enough, but they are things that can and will be overcome by the very act of creating the system itself. The common ownership in a socialist system will, dialectically, lead to its down destruction as the rest falls away. What is more important than distribution is the conditions of production. For instance, the material means of production are, in capitalism, controlled by people that don't work. The majority of the people that live and create, only use their labor power with maybe a few other investments if high enough and in the interest of the bourgeoisie as well.

Once the means of production are property of the workers, then the way things are consumed will immediately change and instead of profits (after fixing machines and maintenance and whatnot) going to a class of individuals that live ever more and more lavishly from larger profits, it will instead go to the workers.

It is no different than the fall of feudalism leading to the lords and kings losing virtually everything, but a more successful system coming in its stead. Capitalism will not last forever either, and coming from it will probably be a more equatable system.

I didn't imagine any future, I insisted that some concepts will still be relevant whatever your economical system will be, which limits how much things can be changed by a mere switch of the economical system. And I deciphered our capitalist society where individual spendings and productive investments are often interleaved, which makes hard to measure the real level of spoiling.

Then this should work the other way. Perhaps you can use these same concepts to decipher the Paleolithic, or French feudalism?

But even this would be easier, as you would be using these processes on things that work instead—as you have been doing—on a future you fabricated, and then accused everyone else accepting as unicorns and pots and gold and whatnot. These were your musings, not anyone else's in the thread.

[Harmattan]

Neither, in honesty, I just see no reason to assume that a communist society is, "likely less efficient."

First of all because the actual examples of collectivization all over the world do not work well on most markets (they do when the asymmetry of information is high - medicine -, the collective benefit significant - education -, the term too long - roads -, etc). Otherwise, for regular markets, it tends to easily rot into inefficient and unfair corporatism, opposing all needed changes. This is because those collectives have no incentives to improve the result and their survival is guaranteed by state monopolies. When a collective enterprise succeeds, this is usually because it faces competition and has to behave like other capitalist corporations.

Also I never see communists say a word about entrepreneurship and individual initiatives, and this is very worrying. If I have an idea in a capitalist society, I "just" have to sacrifice one or more years' worth of savings, then work like a brute for a few years, and profit if all goes well. But what happens in a communist society, how many dozens of people and comities do I need to convince to get the production means I need? What if my suggestion goes against an existing industry? How will the men who produce automobiles look at my suggestion to use standardization to reduce the manpower's need? What if my suggestion is not heard because "what's that fucking 'Internet' you're talking about"? How do I prove the world it is damn wrong? I am not saying it is impossible to marry entrepreneurship and individual initiatives with communism, just that it is very hard. Convincing one venture capitalist out of dozens is hard enough, so you can forget getting a majority out of hundreds of people.

More fundamentally, you have more or less removed or are trying to mute some of the most powerful human drivers: greed (in a large sense: the will to raise above others*), property and individualism. Property is often involved to explain the notable agricultural failures under communist regimes.

* You can argue that it is a good thing that all people are equal. But they will not be, not as long as humans are human. There will be leaders, the same old egotistical bastards that rise through "poltics" (in a broad sense: from the queen of the cheerleaders to the pointy-hair boss and your average Bushbama). You just removed the opportunity to shake this order by creating *your* structure for the sake of preventing some to inherit it.

I generally try to avoid getting too specific as I'm an advocate of the system of analysis more than anything, non-communists coming into this forum are almost always just trolling and not actually interested, and the "wall of text" tend to turn people off, but we have a whole system for this in the transition from capitalism to communism.

And there is nothing here that opposes what I wrote. My initial statement was that out of the whole profits most of it would still be needed (direct and indirect investments) and was already benefiting you (pension funds, taxes), and that you could only at best regain the production that today ends up in luxury goods.

Because Marx mentions investments (expansion of production), maintenance and taxes as needed in communist system. The only difference is that he reasons atop the "proceeds of labor" rather than "added value" because under communism production is determined by quotas rather than a financial balance. But the "cost" remain the same. What changed is mostly that now someone else controls the spendings (the collective or, more likely, its representatives).

The only thing that lacks in Marx's description compared to today is the part that ends up in luxury goods. Because this is the only part that you can assimilate for public needs. But it does amount to few, this is a small part of wealthy people's fortunes and a very small part of the whole world' wealth.

This is, so I understand, what you're questioning.

I wasn't the one who questioned the maxim "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" in the original post. I only hinted at it a few times by remembering that not everyone would earn the average income and criticizing the presumption that intellectual jobs ought to get a higher renumeration (something that Marx does not seem to approve although I am unsure of the exact interpretation of his words - I just understand that he wants more performant workers to earn more without defining performance).

And so this is the basic thrust; the issues you bring up are valid enough, but they are things that can and will be overcome by the very act of creating the system itself.

I fail to see how it could nor when Marx said that investments would nopt be needed in the long run. Unless you're talking about the gratuitous assertion that "all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly".

Besides, again, you're mixing the moral aspects of the communism while the core was its economical viability and its ability to make you wealthier, that I deem extremely unlikely. As for the moral aspects, I do not think that communism is more moral than capitalism: you indeed increase the capacity of half of citizens, but you decrease the freedom for all by creating a collective's dictatorship that aims to erase the natural predatory behaviors. For some us, having all of the aspects of our lives decided by collectives is hell.

And finally, this is what is important about the distinction between socialism (Marx writing about this above) and communism, which has no government:

This statement does not match the quote after it. That being said there will always be a government and executives because governing is a full-time job. Even with a maximum decentralization and granularity, there are too many decisions to consult everyone. And anyway granularity creates more powerful corporations than others, and governments.

Then this should work the other way. Perhaps you can use these same concepts to decipher the Paleolithic, or French feudalism?

There is another misunderstanding : the concepts I explained are general, ranging from paleolithic to capitalism. The man who feeds a baby cow in order to get milk source later is taking a part of its profits (the recolt) to invest. And the lord who builds a mill with the cash from the recolt is seizing the peons' work to improve his capital with a mill but at the same time creates a productive tool for everyone.

What was needed to be deciphered was the form those mechanisms have in the capitalist society, where profits ends up mostly in productive assets rather than big houses, even when they are collected hy Bill Gates or W. Buffet.

But even this would be easier, as you would be using these processes on things that work instead—as you have been doing—on a future you fabricated, and then accused everyone else accepting as unicorns and pots and gold and whatnot. These were your musings, not anyone else's in the thread.

Unicorns would be a world where you would not have to take a part of the production to invest. Marx does agree with me.

[The Immortal Goon]

First of all because the actual examples of collectivization all over the world do not work well on most markets (they do when the asymmetry of information is high - medicine -, the collective benefit significant - education -, the term too long - roads -, etc). Otherwise, for regular markets, it tends to easily rot into inefficient and unfair corporatism, opposing all needed changes. This is because those collectives have no incentives to improve the result and their survival is guaranteed by state monopolies. When a collective enterprise succeeds, this is usually because it faces competition and has to behave like other capitalist corporations.

This is a lot of assumptions hinging on the idea that there is a, "state monopoly," something that we Marxists oppose.

To the broader point though, history refutes your point—your point itself refutes it. Collectivization is exactly what capitalism does, eventually. There is no going back to cobbling a pair of shoes together in your garage and competing with Nike. It is not going to happen because the shoe market has "collectivized," along with every single other industry. In fact, this has gone far enough that even a century ago companies, together with the state, were marching all over the world and formally declaring it their own. It occurs today, it is imperialism—the highest stage of capitalism. It is naive to think that capitalists have nothing to do with the state expansion into other areas, or that they just want to be independent cobblers.

Also I never see communists say a word about entrepreneurship and individual initiatives, and this is very worrying. If I have an idea in a capitalist society, I "just" have to sacrifice one or more years' worth of savings, then work like a brute for a few years, and profit if all goes well.

This is a utopian view of how things are. There are a small number of successful businesses, especially when a new technology like the internet comes to its own. But let's use your own example.

What if my suggestion goes against an existing industry? How will the men who produce automobiles look at my suggestion to use standardization to reduce the manpower's need? What if my suggestion is not heard because "what's that fucking 'Internet' you're talking about"? How do I prove the world it is damn wrong?

If you built a car by yourself and tried to sell it, it would not pass road safety instruction, more than likely, because the government and the capitalists already in power have made sure to strangle you out. They will not standardize based on your idea because they're doing it for a reason. Even if you did have some great idea, they would take it from you and leave you nothing if they could. Should they be able to get it from you, it would be for a comparatively small price for them that would certainly leave you in a place where you weren't allowed to compete with them. How do you prove the world today that, "it is damn wrong?"

Again, I don't have a specific answer for how car manufacture would happen in socialism. But we don't pretend that we do. You pretend that we do and then find fault with it. Fine, but let's not pretend you're arguing with anyone other than yourself when you do this.

More fundamentally, you have more or less removed or are trying to mute some of the most powerful human drivers: greed (in a large sense: the will to raise above others*), property and individualism. Property is often involved to explain the notable agricultural failures under communist regimes.

Property, as you know it today, has not existed for the vast majority of human civilization, let alone history.

You can argue that it is a good thing that all people are equal. But they will not be, not as long as humans are human.

Marx addressed this above.

The only difference is that he reasons atop the "proceeds of labor" rather than "added value" because under communism production is determined by quotas rather than a financial balance.

Marx never mentioned quotas. You're making a straw man argument again.

Besides, again, you're mixing the moral aspects of the communism while the core was its economical viability and its ability to make you wealthier, that I deem extremely unlikely.

I have not once mentioned morality. You're making up arguments nobody made and attacking them.

This statement does not match the quote after it. That being said there will always be a government and executives because governing is a full-time job. Even with a maximum decentralization and granularity, there are too many decisions to consult everyone. And anyway granularity creates more powerful corporations than others, and governments.

There are all kinds of things you could look up on the subject, should you desire to do so. Perhaps most pertinent:

The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high state of development of communism at which the antithesis between mental and physical labor disappears, at which there consequently disappears one of the principal sources of modern social inequality--a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.

This expropriation will make it possible for the productive forces to develop to a tremendous extent. And when we see how incredibly capitalism is already retarding this development, when we see how much progress could be achieved on the basis of the level of technique already attained, we are entitled to say with the fullest confidence that the expropriation of the capitalists will inevitably result in an enormous development of the productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this development will proceed, how soon it will reach the point of breaking away from the division of labor, of doing away with the antithesis between mental and physical labor, of transforming labor into "life's prime want"--we do not and cannot know.

That is why we are entitled to speak only of the inevitable withering away of the state, emphasizing the protracted nature of this process and its dependence upon the rapidity of development of the higher phase of communism, and leaving the question of the time required for, or the concrete forms of, the withering away quite open, because there is no material for answering these questions.

The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labor has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability. "The narrow horizon of bourgeois law", which compels one to calculate with the heartlessness of a Shylock whether one has not worked half an hour more than anybody else--this narrow horizon will then be left behind. There will then be no need for society, in distributing the products, to regulate the quantity to be received by each; each will take freely "according to his needs".

From the bourgeois point of view, it is easy to declare that such a social order is "sheer utopia" and to sneer at the socialists for promising everyone the right to receive from society, without any control over the labor of the individual citizen, any quantity of truffles, cars, pianos, etc. Even to this day, most bourgeois “savants” confine themselves to sneering in this way, thereby betraying both their ignorance and their selfish defence of capitalism.

Ignorance--for it has never entered the head of any socialist to “promise” that the higher phase of the development of communism will arrive; as for the greatest socialists' forecast that it will arrive, it presupposes not the present ordinary run of people, who, like the seminary students in Pomyalovsky's stories,[2] are capable of damaging the stocks of public wealth "just for fun", and of demanding the impossible.

There is another misunderstanding : the concepts I explained are general, ranging from paleolithic to capitalism.

This is clearly not true.

The man who feeds a baby cow in order to get milk source later is taking a part of its profits (the recolt) to invest.

Profit: money that is made in a business, through investing, etc., after all the costs and expenses are paid : a financial gain

I guess if you make up your own crazy definitions, you can do whatever you want. But this is stretching the term, "profit," pretty fucking far.

And the lord who builds a mill with the cash from the recolt is seizing the peons' work to improve his capital with a mill but at the same time creates a productive tool for everyone.

This is not at all how European feudalism worked. Cash, when it was circulated, was never circulated like this. The lord would rarely build a mill, but it would be something that the tenant would do. Neither would receive capital from the mill, but instead be able to pay dues with the grain. Later, there was a possibility of getting extra to go to market, but that wasn't for a while and was hardly worth mentioning as it happened so little.

Further, in the last days of this system—the 19th Century—it made it so that there was every incentive not to build a mill and do things better because land went from property of the king to having a financial value. If the tenant built a mill or otherwise improved the land, his rent would go up and he would be forced to move to make way for someone that could pay more. This was a huge problem because it was a new understanding of property that people had accepted.

What was needed to be deciphered was the form those mechanisms have in the capitalist society, where profits ends up mostly in productive assets rather than big houses, even when they are collected hy Bill Gates or W. Buffet.

Most of the people that lived through the change to capitalist society as we know it, ended up dead.

Unicorns would be a world where you would not have to take a part of the production to invest. Marx does agree with me.

It seems that history does not either.

[Harmattan]

This is a lot of assumptions hinging on the idea that there is a, "state monopoly," something that we Marxists oppose.

The text claims that state monopoly is capitalist, not that communism would not have monopolies.
How exactly would the shoe market work under your communism? Tell me, how many collectives manufacture shoes and how to enter one?

This is a utopian view of how things are.

It's not, it's exactly what I have been enjoying.

And your counter-example is badly chosen and not specific to capitalism: of course automobiles are complex. Not because they have been made artificially complex, but because safety regulations and necessary for safety and because standards are necessary to work with the hundreds of actors that form the system that allows specialized, standardized and cheap and efficient production of the thousands of pieces you need. Of course you only enter it if you have a lot of capital (Elon Musk). But the exact same problems would appear under communism.

If you're alone without capital, you do not target the automobile industry, that's all. It would be stupid and this would not be capitalism's fault. First you acquire capital somewhere else. Then after that you can targte something else. I am not claming that capitalism works perfectly, that everyone has a chance, that billionaires deserve their ranks or other stupid things. I am just saying that the system is obviously more functional than dysfunctional.

Again, I don't have a specific answer for how car manufacture would happen in socialism.

How can you claim that there is no reason that communism would be less efficient if you don't even know how goods would be produced? It seems to me that you're more concerned about how to share and control wealth rather than producing it. Isn't it exactly what we encounter in deficient regimes and leaderships?

Property, as you know it today, has not existed for the vast majority of human civilization, let alone history.

Property in substance has always existed. Most animals do experience ownerships, a dog or a cat has *its* territory and *its" food bowl. This is very natural.
The only thing that changed is that now we write that on paper, have a police to enforce it and we extended it to intellectual property (although, again, the idea is quite natural to some extent).

Marx addressed this above.

No he didn't. He stated that hierarchies would be shifted (and this is true). But humans would not be satisfied with equality, there will always be dominants and dominated.

Marx never mentioned quotas. You're making a straw man argument again.

Again you're focusing on the details rather than the essence, what matters is that Marx's reasoning is what I tried to explain to you earlier. Now he didn't mention quotas, but you have to have quotas if you remove currency. If you keep currency, then you must use the capitalist terminology of added value and profits. And pseudo-currency is currency.

The question of how much goods a factory can get and how much it must produce has to depend either of a currency, or of quotas.

I have not once mentioned morality.

"Morale" may be bad choice of words from me. Ethics if you prefer. You're defending communism based on the idea that it could make everyone "equal" (not really but please don't digress on details) without asking whether this repartition could really profit you.

There are all kinds of things you could look up on the subject, should you desire to do so. Perhaps most pertinent:

So, basically, according to Lenin, greed, dominance and such will end up disappear?
Sorry it will not happen, humans will be humans.

I guess if you make up your own crazy definitions, you can do whatever you want. But this is stretching the term, "profit," pretty fucking far.

More nitpicking, yay. The point is that people have always took a part of their production to increase their future production. From paleolithic to whatever stupid regime you want to consider.



This will be my last discussion with you. This goes nowhere and I feel like I am discussing with a wall.

[mikema63]

You're asking a historian why he doesn't just tell you exactly how cars would be produced under communism?

It's easy to point out how cars are produced, but to create an alternative system to do so would require expertise in car manufacturing that you cannot demand that we have.

TiG might be able to create a plausible account of how academia might function under communism, but he can't tell you how he's going to build a car.

We can however, criticize the problems of capitalism and do so using the analytical framework of Marxism that we subscribe to.

[lucky]

Profit: money that is made in a business, through investing, etc., after all the costs and expenses are paid : a financial gain

This definition is just wrong. That sounds more like positive cash flow, not profit. These are two very different things. In accounting, profit is not an increase in money. Cash is just one of the assets. You can have a profit before you receive any money whatsoever. That's why the Cash Flow Statement is a different financial report from the Income Statement (also called Profit and Loss Statement).

[The Immortal Goon]

The text claims that state monopoly is capitalist, not that communism would not have monopolies.

It was in response to you writing, in part:

[quote=Harmatten"]Collective benefit significant - education -, the term too long - roads -, etc). Otherwise, for regular markets, it tends to easily rot into inefficient and unfair corporatism, opposing all needed changes. This is because those collectives have no incentives to improve the result and their survival is guaranteed by state monopolies. [/quote]

In short, your assertion was that collectivization does not work, and that big collectives could only be maintained by state monopolies. Thus, a socialist system would have some kind of state monopoly system. I refuted this. Your response is to underline this. Fair enough.

I am not claming that capitalism works perfectly, that everyone has a chance, that billionaires deserve their ranks or other stupid things. I am just saying that the system is obviously more functional than dysfunctional.

No Marxist would disagree, from a historical perspective.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

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

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

But everything changes. We Marxists study how things change and why. We use a dialectical model and study the material in order to do so. We acknowledge things that are true, but look to how things change and why.

Capitalists seem to be content to cross their arms and insist that either nothing will ever change again or that nothing has ever changed. That feudalism and the neolithic were capitalism. This is simply not true. Which leads me to...

How can you claim that there is no reason that communism would be less efficient if you don't even know how goods would be produced? It seems to me that you're more concerned about how to share and control wealth rather than producing it. Isn't it exactly what we encounter in deficient regimes and leaderships?

We can look at these change and predict certain things. The main thrust, and the links posted all go into it if you're actually curious, is that every system has a certain amount of inefficiency in it. This you acknowledge about capitalism above. These inefficiencies create contradictions, these contradictions result in creating a new system. Capitalism was so successful at what it did that it came close to globalizing, for instance, but while the bourgeoisie are tethered to the national governments that they control-they can move through the world and set up factories or businesses globally with impunity. The proletariat, that produces the goods, all have the same relationship to the same companies throughout the world, but are restricted to their movement. Thus, we have a contradiction. A new system would sweep this away.

So far as the deficient regimes and leaderships, as you call it, they actually tend to fail because they become rigid about what socialism will look like in specifics. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and many others were honest about what they could accomplish. Lenin, for instance, scoffed at the idea that the Soviet Union was even a Workers' State, let alone a socialist (by definition this is international) state:

...ours is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag. There you have the reality of the transition. Well, is it right to say that in a state that has taken this shape in practice the trade unions have nothing to protect, or that we can do without them in protecting the material and spiritual interests of the massively organised proletariat? No, this reasoning is theoretically quite wrong. It takes us into the sphere of abstraction or an ideal we shall achieve in 15 or 20 years’ time, and I am not so sure that we shall have achieved it even by then. What we actually have before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge, provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be carried awav by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by what may appear to be “theory” but is in fact error and misapprehension of the peculiarities of transition. We now have a state under which it is the business of the massively organised proletariat to protect itself, while we, for our part, must use these workers’ organisations to protect the workers from their state, and to get them to protect our state. Both forms of protection are achieved through the peculiar interweaving of our state measures and our agreeing or “coalescing” with our trade unions.

Stalin and his ilk, to whom I assume you are referring, did the opposite and claimed that they were completely socialist, and thus everything they did was socialist, and thus there was no problems.

When you ask me, or any other Marxist worth his or her salt, what a socialist regime will look like exactly we hedge toward Lenin. It will be international. But how does it develop? Is it after a war? After an economic collapse at the top? A, "weak link in the chain of capitalism," like Russia was? The third world? The result of a new organization after a meteor hits the planet? These things are important because we study systems and change within those systems. To ask us just to tell you the specific process in building a car in twenty, a hundred years is as petty as demanding a capitalist to do the same and denying the possibility of capitalism for failure to anticipate a change in technology.

Property in substance has always existed. Most animals do experience ownerships, a dog or a cat has *its* territory and *its" food bowl. This is very natural.

Personal property, arguably always has. Private property, on the other hand, has demonstrably not always existed.

One of the key victories in the Plantation of Ulster, for instance, was the British taking huge plots of land and then giving it back to the Ri or Mael they had just defeated. There was a dual purpose in this-the first was a show of power. The second was that the land changed condition. You explained:

The only thing that changed is that now we write that on paper, have a police to enforce it and we extended it to intellectual property (although, again, the idea is quite natural to some extent).

The fact that land, which had always been, was reduced to a concept on paper that an individual - even a Ri or Mael - owned was completely novel. It utterly transformed the way that Ireland had been run. But Ireland was hardly unique in this, it was a revolution slowly taking place as the beginning of capitalism itself stirred. The most famous example is almost certainly the Europeans encountering the Americans. The concept of making land, or anything else, an abstraction that existed on paper in the possession of one individual that owned the thing was as lost on the American of the 1500s as it was the Irishman of the 1100s.

Even something as basic as a bowl, in the feudal period, was not so much yours as that of your family or status. The way we tend to think about heirlooms today, something you hold onto until it passes down to someone you're tied to-never yours, depriving you of the right to sell or destroy it-this is how all things were for the vast majority in feudalism.

The idea that we always had a consumer culture, or that our ideas of property were always the same is demonstrably false. It's again arguing that capitalism will always exist because nothing has ever changed. Instead, we look at how things have changed.

He stated that hierarchies would be shifted (and this is true). But humans would not be satisfied with equality, there will always be dominants and dominated.

You should read the link, but this doesn't even make sense with your argument.

You can argue that it is a good thing that all people are equal. But they will not be, not as long as humans are human.

I sent you to Marx, and now you're arguing some kind of circular logic that your misreading of Marx agrees with you, so Marx is wrong. I don't even know what you're trying to say beyond arguing for the sake of arguing.

Again you're focusing on the details rather than the essence, what matters is that Marx's reasoning is what I tried to explain to you earlier. Now he didn't mention quotas, but you have to have quotas if you remove currency.

So you're going to condemn Marx for something you made up. And I can't speak of specifics for this kind of abstraction. I have directed you to links on the philosophical if you desire.

"Morale" may be bad choice of words from me. Ethics if you prefer. You're defending communism based on the idea that it could make everyone "equal" (not really but please don't digress on details) without asking whether this repartition could really profit you.

I have read this forward and backward and can't make heads or tails of it. So you're not accusing me of using morality only, but something equally as abstract like ethics if I prefer, which I don't. What are you specifically referring to when you want to debate me talking about equality? You conjured an imaginary argument out of thin air to fight, then fought it, then admitted you made it up, and want to discuss it further. What are you talking about?

So, basically, according to Lenin, greed, dominance and such will end up disappear?
Sorry it will not happen, humans will be humans.

No, basically, according to Lenin, the conception of property will disappear. From the citation that you supposedly read:

The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high state of development of communism at which the antithesis between mental and physical labor disappears, at which there consequently disappears one of the principal sources of modern social inequality--a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.

I already went through a good deal of the transition of property into capitalism above; Lenin goes through some of the changes.

More nitpicking, yay. The point is that people have always took a part of their production to increase their future production. From paleolithic to whatever stupid regime you want to consider.

It's not, "nitpicking," to point out you are wrong. You have sufficiently expanded the definition enough to make your argument meaningless. Here's Engels talking about how labour creates wealth from even before the paleolithic.

This will be my last discussion with you. This goes nowhere and I feel like I am discussing with a wall.

If that's what you want.

This definition is just wrong.

Damn that wily dictionary and its leftist bias!

[lucky]

How can you claim that there is no reason that communism would be less efficient if you don't even know how goods would be produced? It seems to me that you're more concerned about how to share and control wealth rather than producing it. Isn't it exactly what we encounter in deficient regimes and leaderships?

We can look at these change and predict certain things. The main thrust, and the links posted all go into it if you're actually curious, is that every system has a certain amount of inefficiency in it. This you acknowledge about capitalism above. These inefficiencies create contradictions, these contradictions result in creating a new system. Capitalism was so successful at what it did that it came close to globalizing, for instance, but while the bourgeoisie are tethered to the national governments that they control-they can move through the world and set up factories or businesses globally with impunity. The proletariat, that produces the goods, all have the same relationship to the same companies throughout the world, but are restricted to their movement. Thus, we have a contradiction. A new system would sweep this away.

This doesn't answer the question, does it?

Communists seem to want this new system, not merely "predict" it. Even if they are not the kind that positively want to destroy the system and speed up the communist revolution, they certainly seem optimistic about communism's productive capability and resulting social welfare.

But then, when pressed for a description of that new system of production that they so clearly consider superior, so that we can evaluate its efficiency, they just say "we don't know, how can we know, whatever happens, happens". That doesn't sound very constructive.

[The Immortal Goon]

I'll admit that I tend to have a more academic draw to Marxism than an activisty one, and this is something of an important self-criticism I need to address. But it isn't so much, "what happens happens," because the whole point is to change and organize and whatnot.

But the very act of organization and movement itself will address many of these issues. The nature of this is important.

When you ask me, or any other Marxist worth his or her salt, what a socialist regime will look like exactly we hedge toward Lenin. It will be international. But how does it develop? Is it after a war? After an economic collapse at the top? A, "weak link in the chain of capitalism," like Russia was? The third world? The result of a new organization after a meteor hits the planet? These things are important because we study systems and change within those systems. To ask us just to tell you the specific process in building a car in twenty, a hundred years is as petty as demanding a capitalist to do the same and denying the possibility of capitalism for failure to anticipate a change in technology.

[Conscript]

I don't exactly recall capitalism being proposed in depth on paper and tested in clinical conditions to figure out if it was actually more productive than feudalism.

Marxists can describe underlying principles and tendencies to the socialist economy, but what you want, something to 'evaluate its efficiency', is formed in response to conditions we're not even aware of and set up for an entirely different purpose than your system (for starters, socialists want to abolish commodities and the 'Law of Value', to produce for use value not exchange value). A marxist would be arbitrary and detached in describing in detail the socialist economy, especially since it will likely encompass the world.

Not sure if many people have argued on meer efficiency claims of socialism, anyway, since capitalism's doesn't exactly serve the proletariat's. It is, first and foremost, about putting a completely different set of interests at the helm, that of the commons/the working class. How exactly the workers and their organs of power set up car production is going to be particular to the time, place, and people. That said, there really is no reason to think socialism will be less efficient in terms of productivity or innovation.

[lucky]

To ask us just to tell you the specific process in building a car in twenty, a hundred years is as petty as demanding a capitalist to do the same and denying the possibility of capitalism for failure to anticipate a change in technology.

The capitalism supporter does not say "I have this radical idea for how to organize production, and it's better", so the question "OK, how does it work?" doesn't really apply to him. I can describe how the production process works now, and I don't see any reason to think your plan is an improvement. The question isn't about predicting the details of what the future holds, it's about your goals, and about the economic claims being made here and now.

Not sure if many people have argued on meer efficiency claims of socialism, anyway,

You just did, in the same statement even:

since capitalism's doesn't exactly serve the proletariat's.

You imply that your system is better for the proletariat. To evaluate that claim, I'd need to understand how it's supposed to work, and then see the arguments about the economics of the new system.

[The Immortal Goon]

Here you go.

If you want to take about something specific, go for it.

[Conscript]

No, you're moving the goalposts. You were talking about efficiency, I said what is efficient in capitalism doesn't necessarily correspond with working class interests, whereas socialism does ergo we shouldn't compare on basis of 'efficiency' (at what, anyway?). Now you're talking about it merely being 'better'.

I suppose plain old Marx and Lenin would suit you here. You can start with the concept of surplus value and commodified labor in terms of working class interests and capitalism.

[lucky]

If you want to take about something specific, go for it.

Will, in your system, cars still be produced? Will new kinds of sex toys get produced? If so, by what economic mechanism? With what will the capitalist incentives to save and invest and build companies for profit be replaced? Describe the replacement in general terms.