[ckaihatsu]

You're basically describing *capitalism* as it exists, and I'm emphasizing the system's inherent dynamic towards *income inequality*, and/or *deflation*.

No, you are either conflating economics and capitalism or assuming a false dichotomy between capitalism and socialism. I said socialists know they are incompetent to solve the problem of economics. Capitalists are too, but they don't know it.

Capitalist economics is the prevailing, status-quo kind of economics. And, yes, there *is* an objective difference of meaning between capitalism and socialism.

I've already provided a particular approach to the question of a post-capitalist material-economics, which is here:


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Capitalism does aggravate income inequality, but the effect you describe:

Wealth becomes locally concentrated and stagnant while *ownership* of wealth is rewarded with interest and rent payments, instead of going to socially needed production and/or wages for the workers actually doing the requisite work.

is an over-generalization. The success of capitalism is precisely that it DOES direct purchasing power to productive investment (though not wages) better than competing systems such as socialism and feudalism.

Feudalism is capitalism's *predecessor* -- capitalism is an incremental improvement over feudalism / slavery, since it allows for labor to be far more self-determining, though economically it's still a form of slavery (wage-slavery) against one's implicit biological and social needs for the materials of life and living.

You've *already* acknowledged the dynamic of rentier capital, so you *know* that it's an inherent aspect of capitalism, as in any type of savings -- which is, by default, *not* invested / used as equity capital, and can economically command payments based on private ownership alone, without even being productive.

You're trying to deny / wiggle-out-of the fact that capitalism inexorably tends toward income inequality, so my point stands.


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I'll *readily* acknowledge the real distinction between *productive* / equity capital, and non-productive *rentier* capital, as I covered at-length at this thread at RedMarx:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/redmarx ... t1241.html

OK, so why don't we make the distinction explicit by using "producer goods" to mean productive capital, "privilege" to mean what you call rentier capital, and "purchasing power" to mean the undifferentiated fungible assets that could be devoted to either one?

You can label things however you like -- I can always *parse* your favored terms, into more-generally-recognizable terms.


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That said, though, a key (revolutionary and otherwise) leftist argument is about what governmental spending priorities (policies) actually *go to* -- the bourgeois government's quasi-collectivization of funds (tax receipts) *do* primarily go to non-humane empire-building activities like military warfare and corporate welfare, to generally benefit the demographic of private property owners, against the interests and well-being of the working class.

That's a valid enough historical observation, but it doesn't address the theoretical economic issue I'm talking about. Governments can choose not to engage in military adventures and corporate welfare.

You're not even anti-imperialist with this line of yours -- *of course* capitalist governments *must* engage in militarism, adventurism, and imperialism, and corporate welfare, because their whole socio-political-material system would come crashing down if left to its own dynamics alone. That's why the U.S. showed particular favoritism for certain banks, and not others, in its bailout of 2008-2009.

They CAN'T choose not to benefit landowners exclusively when they spend tax revenue on desirable services and infrastructure. They CAN'T choose not to benefit IP monopolists when they confer IP monopoly privileges. They CAN'T choose not to benefit banksters when they enable banks to treat loan proceeds as newly issued money.

Again you're merely poking at certain bourgeois-*internal* practices that you'd like to see reformed -- you're making my case *for* me here, that equity capital and rentier capital are *both* endemic to the larger system of capitalism, as much as you *wish* to only have the former and eliminate the latter.


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These government funding priorities are *elitist* because they don't (necessarily) build up infrastructure in common, like the Internet and expressways,

That infrastructure is common only in name, as it exclusively benefits landowners who own the locations from which it can be accessed.

No, you're incorrect -- the U.S. Interstate expressway system *and* the Internet would both have been impossible without the backing of government funding. These two examples of public infrastructure do *not* 'exclusively benefit landowners who own the locations from which they can be accessed', because they're made *available* to the public on a non-ownership basis.

But much else, like government-paid scientific research and development, *are* turned over to private corporate interests, for resulting bonazas of profit-making on a proprietary basis.


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nor do these status quo politics strive to overcome the material inequalities that result from capitalist economics' inherent functioning.

There is a difference between the choices that particular governments make and the inherent effects of institutions.

You're trying to pin the blame on *government*, when in fact it's the very *function* of capitalism -- with its never-ending 'primitive accumulation of capital' dynamic -- that makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If one were to run thousands of computer simulations using real-world economic parameters this is what the result would be, regardless, over and over again.


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Capitalism's inbuilt system of *exchange values* become the prevailing economic concern, over that of parallel *use* values, as for satisfying unmet human need.

No, exchange value is based on use value (utility) at the margin.

However you'd like to conceive of its derivation is of *zero* concern to me, since you're just going-off on *tangents* -- it suffices that capitalism's system of exchange values *exists*, and that it does *not* align with real-world humane needs for the underlying *use values* of the materials themselves.


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Only in the overgeneralized abstract -- scarcity can be alleviated only by those who can *afford* to purchase goods and services that they need, while those who *don't* have the required money aren't even formally counted as 'demand' within the context of capitalist economics.

But the existence of more products means less money is required to afford them. There is a problem with increases in production being taken as land rent, but that problem does not alter the fact that relieving scarcity by production is the basic point of economic activity, and investment in producer goods is a contribution to it.

But you're still not acknowledging the empirical 'barrier-to-entry' that exists due to human need being compelled to use the money-commodity instrument.

You're sounding exactly like a supply-sider, in that 'supply' (for a price) is formally seen as the only variable to satisfy to banish scarcity. (I'll remind, for a historical example, that the Irish had been producing *plenty* of potatoes, yet many starved to death because the potatoes were expropriated and sold as a commodity to the English, for private profit-making.)


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The reality-based principle that I'll invoke here is that regarding *revenue* -- if both capital and labor are objectively required for the production of goods and services in the economy then why isn't there an even-handed *co-management* of asset owners and workers over the resulting *revenue* -- ?

Because as I already explained, the balance of bargaining power is broken by privilege: legal entitlements to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.

Consider a simple example: Landowners own all the land in a certain area, and rent it out to tenant farmers. A tenant farmer with no capital but seed corn can grow ten bushels of corn in a year on an acre of land, of which he has to pay five in rent, eating the other five. A tenant farmer who also has a horse can grow 20 bushels a year, paying five in rent, eating four (he doesn't have to work as hard), feeding eight to his horse, and having three left as a surplus.

Now, a particular tenant farmer who has acquired two horses arranges to rent two acres, and hires another tenant to work the other acre in return for wages of six bushels of corn, paying five in rent, feeding eight to the horse, and keeping one bushel as profit. The hired employee now has a surplus of two bushels (he only eats four now, remember), but socialists claim he is somehow being exploited by his employer because the horse enables him to double his production, but he only gets to keep two more bushels out of the additional ten. They ignore the fact that his employer actually makes him better off, and it is the five bushels in rent taken by the landowner in return for nothing that places the hired farmer at a disadvantage, not his employer, who only provides him with an opportunity he would not otherwise have.

Of course I oppose rentier capital (private property, etc.) as being illegitimate, but I know that even your cherished *equity* capital just feeds right into exacerbating the class divide by intensifying income inequality.

In this scenario the tenant farmers with assets of their *own* (seed corn, horses, employees) are actually *petty capitalists* to greater or lesser extents, and so are *vendors* in the overall economic context, and are *not* strictly working-class.

Your apologetics for these petty capitalists, in juxtaposing them to the large landholder extracting rent payments, only makes my point *for* me, because the *most*-exploited person in this scenario is the 'hired employee' of a 'particular tenant farmer', since this person has no stated assets of their own to leverage. The employer could very well summarily *reduce* the worker's wages to five, or even four, bushels of corn the very next year -- we have insufficient information as to what the *larger* commodity-economics / market for hired farmwork is, assuming that the landowner wouldn't just use physical force to subdue *all* of these non-landowning people to the confines of the landowner's property, indefinitely.

The 'hired employee' must *use* the asset of the horse while laboring, but this worker doesn't *own* the horse him- / herself, and so can't materially become a petty equity capitalist him or herself, like the others.

All you're doing with this scenario is wearing rose-colored glasses -- the fictional sample numbers look *great*, the hired employee has a *fantastic* wage, and by this you claim that the worker isn't being 'exploited', and never will be in the future. But the material Marxist definition of 'exploitation' is not-owning-capital of one's own, and that's the exact category that this sub-contracted worker falls into.

Also, where's all of your previously-expressed *outrage* over what the (rentier-capital) *landlord* is doing in this scenario -- ?? You've suddenly forgotten about that particular capitalist-economic faction, and are content with the landlord's private property ownership that siphons-off rents from all equity / labor-exploiting types.


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You may want to specify exactly what 'liberty' workers are deprived of, since your statement is vague and ambiguous.

The liberty to do what they would be at liberty to do if that liberty had not been removed by privilege: use land and other natural resources to support themselves; deal with their fellows by mutual consent using money without having to pay interest to banksters for exercising their privilege of creating it; use the knowledge and ideas that have entered the public domain without paying monopolists for permission to do so; etc.

Okay, now what about *weapons* -- who exactly gets to use *those*, and also what about the newest, sparkliest, most-technologically-advanced productive facilities? Who gets to use *those*?


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The *expropriation* of labor power / value *is* real, though, because the price received by ownership for the products of labor-power is always greater than what is paid to those workers *for* that labor-power.

First of all, that claim is just objectively false. If price were always greater than labor cost, no firm would ever take a loss, let alone go bankrupt.

This is flat-out bullshit reasoning -- the market for the finished goods may simply not be adequate for sufficient sales for a company to cover its costs. Another possibility would be that the firm makes bad management decisions and purchases too much in advance, at too-high prices, thus overspending on 'constant capital'.

Second, you incorrectly assume there is no production input to be paid for but workers' labor.

No, I don't -- I just mentioned 'constant capital' costs.

Third, you incorrectly assume that labor earns the full exchange price of what is produced,

Well, there's only capital and labor -- how *should* this split (of revenue) be determined within the context of capitalist economics?

and wages less than that amount constitute "exploitation." See above for the refutation of those claims.

Why shouldn't the *workers* be the ones to enjoy the profits from the enterprise, instead of the profits going to the owners of the equity capital?

It *is* exploitation when the worker(s) have no assets / capital of their own, and so they're only able to sell their own labor-power, or capacity to work, for a wage. Capital is disproportionately rewarded for its investment in the enterprise, and so labor is thus exploited.


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[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show

I'm not going to read long, ill-considered and uninformed tracts, sorry. If you think you have something relevant to say, quote the relevant passage.

Whatever -- I just *described* the diagram in words, in the previous quote block, so there you go.


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Roughly speaking -- the capitalist 'superstructure' obviously favors private property owners, and moreso on the *rentier* capital side of things, which is then comparable to the conditions of past feudalism and slavery, since direct expropriation of labor's fruits was enabled simply by pre-existing asset ownership.

See above. Owning an asset that consists of others' rights to liberty enables exploitation. Owning an asset that only offers additional opportunity does not.

No, you're incorrect for the reasons I just stated -- both rentier and equity capital are disproportionately favored and rewarded, by their respective value inputs into the production process, as compared with that of labor. It's exploitation because labor doesn't own its own elitist private property, by definition. It can only access a *wage* as compensation, and cannot access *profits* from the business.


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The more *modern* definition, in today's world of commodity-fetishism, has to do with labor's own collective reproduction of its labor-power, going-forward, compared with how many more hours they / we work for the business owners, with the business owners pocketing the difference.

You have obviously never worked in business, let alone owned one.

*Everyone* who's worked *a day* in their lives, has worked 'in business', because the *entire world* is run by businesses. It doesn't matter what the industry is, or what the particular goods or services being produced are.


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In other words, the baseline is that labor has to exist more-or-less steadily going into the future, and the number of hours of work for the sustenance and reproduction of that global labor force is easily calculable -- basically wages -- which *should* imply a limited number of work hours, limited to that material sustenance and reproduction going-forward. But capitalism doesn't stop there -- it *expropriates* the *extra* labor hours worked that are *not* needed by the laborer him- or herself.

Who is doing the expropriating in the above example, the employer who increases the worker's wages by his contribution, or the landowner who takes them in return for nothing?

To the laborer your distinction here of two different types of private property ownership is *superfluous* because the laborer is exploited by *both*.


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So effectively it's just as bad a form of class exploitation as feudalism or slavery was, as in the expropriation of a serf's farming goods based on a set proportion of crops or on labor-days in the week versus Sunday's productivity for the serf himself (with unpaid *domestic* labor by the womenfolk).

Yes, the requirement that workers pay landowners full market value just for PERMISSION to work effectively enslaves them. It is only massive government intervention in the form of minimum wages, welfare, labor standards laws, union monopolies, public education and health care, etc. in advanced capitalist countries that prevents the enslavement of workers by landowners.

Under feudalism / slavery workers were physically *coerced* to stay on lords' and masters' landed estates, so there *were no* markets at that time. The bourgeois revolutions, due to preceding objective changes in increased agricultural productivities, formally acknowledged and acceded state power to the nascent merchants' increasing economic power.

Under capitalism, though, workers must find *some kind* of employer -- to the worker it doesn't matter *which*, as long as they can then live off of the wages earned. But there's no choice to *deny* employment if one has no means of one's own to pay for the unavoidable costs of life and living. In this way the class divide is *still* one of coercion, even if the actual state violence needed for enforcement of this private-property regime is lessened compared to the fixed-localism of the preceding feudalism or slavery.

The only reason that there may still be some minimal, token state *benefits* remaining, for workers, like the ones you've mentioned, is due to past histories of successful working class struggles that *forced* such concessions from the state, as in the '30s under FDR.


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when in fact it's a daily, hourly process that systematically robs the worker of their labor and time -- merely consider that whatever the worker produces is invariably sold for more on the market, by the employer, than what is paid back to the worker in the form of wages.

The worker is underpaid because he has been deprived of his right to liberty by privilege, not because his employer makes a profit.

It's not 'either-or', it's *both* --

No, it is not, as explained above. The employer INCREASES the workers' wages; the landowner reduces them. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way to explain that to you.

Wages don't just magically go upwards -- the bosses / labor-exploiters have an *objective* interest in keeping costs *down*, particularly labor costs. And historically we see the expected result, that growth in wages has *not* matched gains in productivity:




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when in fact it's a daily, hourly process that systematically robs the worker of their labor and time -- merely consider that whatever the worker produces is invariably sold for more on the market, by the employer, than what is paid back to the worker in the form of wages.

The worker is underpaid because he has been deprived of his right to liberty by privilege, not because his employer makes a profit.

you're trying to create a false dichotomy between the _political_ and _economic_ aspects of oppression and exploitation, respectively.

It's not a false dichotomy. Profiting by relieving scarcity is completely different from profiting by imposing it. The latter is oppression and exploitation, the former is not.

You're only talking about a purported 'oppression' on *capital-owners*, and not on the working class itself.

Also, there's no *guarantee* that equity owners will 'relieve scarcity' -- again this is supply-sided only, and even if there's an *overproduction* of commodities, that doesn't automatically relieve scarcity because there may not necessarily be enough dollar-demand to *obtain* those produced products, to relieve scarcity at the ground-level of *consumption*.


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No, I'm *not* making any erroneous assertions that only workers make material inputs into the production process, but it's important to note that *all* material and value derive from labor-power -- all commodities / assets, throughout all of class history, could not have been created unless *someone* toiled to produce them.

No, it's completely irrelevant. The fact that A paid B to produce something does not give anyone else any claim to it whatsoever. The fact that B was a worker does not give any other worker any claim to it whatsoever just because he is also a worker.

You're just recounting the *status quo* social arrangement of things, and are then attempting to make it sound like it's the *correct* way of doing all things economic. You're blatantly *ignoring* the empirical *exploitation* of the working class, based on who controls the process of (machinery-aided) production, and who controls the resulting revenue. My statement above stands.


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Once created by laborers and expropriated by property-owners,

Paying someone the market rate to produce something is not expropriation, stop lying.

*Of course* it's expropriation, because the private-property owner and the laborer are *not* on a level playing field regarding how production is done and how revenue is distributed between dividends and wages. You think the 'invisible hand' of the markets is somehow automatically an even-handed arbiter of economic matters, but it's not set up to *be* that way. Labor becomes 'dead labor', and those machines and infrastructure become *privatized* and used as a form of social control against *incoming* labor and its labor-power. This is *not* an acceptable social paradigm.


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such assets and goods and services can accurately be called 'dead labor'.

No, they cannot. Labor is human effort devoted to production. It cannot be alive or dead.

You're not even *bothering* to understand the terminology. Go back, try again.


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It's not a regular *Marxian* approach, but it *does* correspond to reality

No, it does not. Privilege is a dominant factor in reality. Depending on the country, the rents of privilege may absorb half or more of GDP.

Yes, the remnants of feudal economic control continue through today, in the form of rentier (non-productive) capital, which you may call 'privilege', but I'm noting that 'privilege' today is *any* form of capital ownership, including *equity* capital, since the world's working class can only sell its labor-power in order to obtain the means for life and living.


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and makes the point, as I stated above, that though both labor and ownership have inputs into the productive process, only ownership alone *controls* the resulting revenue, which is a clear imbalance that then ripples (socio-political) inequality through the whole process, and society.

No, the business owners control the revenue because they are the cause of production. The product is rightly owned by its producer: the one whose action causes the product to exist rather than not exist. That is the owner, not the worker. The worker is merely another production factor employed by the owner.

'Rightly' -- ??

If and when *labor* withholds its labor-power production can no longer take place, and business ownership can no longer enjoy profit-making. Think about *that* for awhile.


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Well, 'collective ownership' wouldn't *quite* be the correct term to describe such a society, but it *would* be *casually* descriptive, in the sense that no one would be an 'owner' / controller of anything large-scale potentially any more than the next person.

Not necessarily. Sometimes one person can build up a production system to a large scale.

But in which *context* do you mean -- ?

You're obviously favoring the status-quo, *capitalist* context, while I'm describing a *post*-capitalist context, wherein private 'ownership' of this-or-that would be *superseded* by workers control, production of an *abundance* for humane needs, and mass collective 'ownership' -- really *usage* -- of all resulting goods and services.


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Hmmmm, we're not on the same page here -- the dependent variable isn't 'identity', or even 'personality', but rather something more like 'personal social experience', and possibly 'personhood'.

But they aren't socially determined either. All experience passes through the lens of the individual's genetic constitution. This is utterly obvious to anyone who has ever been a parent to more than one child. However much you may try to treat them the same, they are different from birth.

You're missing the point -- what's of *far* more importance to the individual is how they're treated by *society*, especially as they're developing and finding their place in the world. All of *these* factors *are* 'social', and any trivial personality similarities from genetics are nowhere near as significant as how human social consciousness operates and how prevailing power structures shape incoming generations of people.


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And none of these conceptions are so dependent on *genetics*, as you claim, because genetics doesn't adapt quickly enough to the vicissitudes of class-based social life.

Genetics is what gives us our greater or lesser abilities to adapt quickly: some are fast adapters, others struggle. It's genetic, and largely linked to the "Big Five" traits known as neuroticism, agreeableness and openness, all of which are known to have strong genetic components.

Ehhhh, you're the kind who turns psychology into a religion. Again, *societal* dynamics are far more deterministic, for the qualities of life that are most important to the individual, small-group, etc.


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

Spoiler: show

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So it really is 'nurture', rather than 'nature', which is most deterministic of our 'selves' as we grow up and develop, and consciously integrate more-fully into larger social life as adults.

Get back to me when you have raised some kids. Marx's pre-modern view of the human psyche as determined by modes of production has been proved flat wrong by psychological research.

No, *you're* flat-wrong.


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at this point it's sheerly a matter of *social organization*, and we can now do such without even needing *money* or abstract exchange-value-type valuations of any kind.

Without exchange, you can't value, and without value, you can't allocate.

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh -- again, this is a monumental misnomer.

In what way?

All your precious economic 'exchanges' are just a kind of fetishism with exchange values, over use values. Each 'exchange' is a *middleman* operation that performs a *superfluous* function on the commodity, only really serving the *ideology* of the economic system that you're wedded-to.

For example, I developed a model framework for a post-capitalist socio-political-material social order that's congruent with a communistic gift economy -- it features *free-access* (to social production), and *direct-distribution* (of social production, to consumers) without requiring *any* exchanges or exchange-values.


Labor credits FAQ

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labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show

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You seem to be using an individually-constrained, *psychological*-type definition of 'personal identity', or 'personality', when the *point* of the social-reality-determines-our-being argument is that we have more *in common* with each other, due to society-regulated *socialization*, rather than us each being unique butterflies or whatever due to miniscule differences in genetic makeup from one to the next.

But the individuality of identity and how genetics colors individual experience of the social milieu is just established empirical fact. Marxist zombies still engage in a rear-guard action to try to rescue Marx's theory of human nature from brutal physical facts, but their efforts are doomed to failure.

The *factors* that you deem as being *significant* -- personality traits -- are really *not*, within the larger structure of how society functions (or doesn't). Also, such psychological theories don't even account for individual *free will* and self-determination, to varying extents.


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No, you're missing the point -- the advent of *collectivized full automation* of productive machinery / means would mean that individual material desires would *more easily* be satisfiable, compared to conditions today, so it would be a paradoxical combination of more-enabled *individualization*, as through personal selection ('consumption'), with more-enabled *collectivization*, by combined consent, particularly over socially-necessary *productive* ('production') processes.

That's never been the case yet, though it might happen in the future. I would venture that such productive powers would lead to a more individualistic society as people were freed from the need to please or even deal with others in order to live.

Exactly -- I'm glad you actually *appreciate* this model of social productivity. It's all because of *abundance* -- we obviously have the current *means* of producing an abundance of use-values, as seen with capitalism's *overproduction* dynamic:

[T]he large volumes of precious metals from America led to inflation, which had a negative effect on the poorer part of the population, as goods became overpriced. This also hampered exports, as expensive goods could not compete in international markets. Moreover, the large cash inflows from silver hindered the industrial development in Spain as entrepreneurship seems to be indispensable.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ ... _New_World

But capitalism's 'overproduction' dynamic is *shit* at *distributing* these already-produced goods and services, unfortunately, to the people who actually *need* them -- hence artificial scarcities, even for the commodity of food, and the resulting human death toll as a result.


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As an illustration, consider a feasible scenario in which technology progresses and brings about a world in which everyone has their own advanced 3D printer, thanks to capitalism's markets. These 3D printers of the future can produce *anything* designed, whether organic or inorganic -- the only catch is the *feedstock* required, and so a radical-type populistic social norm prevails that values these feedstocks, and their ready production, as much as the planet's *water* supplies.

Again, that's landowning.

No, allow me to clarify -- as things are today the resource of *water* is freely available, by law and social norms, to the individual. If production for just about *anything* and *everything* humanely critical becomes a *desktop* operation, then the only remaining material concern would be that of the *feedstocks* for that productive process, and this universality of social 'demand' could put everyone on-the-same-page *politically*, to where private 'ownership' of the same would become infeasible and more trouble than it's worth, perhaps akin to the way that free and open-source software alternatives exist today, undercutting demand for conventional and market-priced *commercial* software.

This dynamic would be socially *revolutionary*, because an upsurge in populist-type *demand* for feedstocks could provide the critical-mass necessary to 'un-fence' private property claims over the same, all over the world, finally putting rentier-capital / landowning *in the grave*, and most-likely *equity* capital, too, since all capital would become fully superfluous and avoidable for *any* needed material productivity, now accomplished at the scale of the individual, mostly.


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Private ownership is at a loss to proprietize and commodify the natural resources that go into these feedstocks,

Don't you believe it. The something-for-nothing guys are nothing if not relentless.

Again, you're missing the point with your obsessiveness with the *commodity* form -- I was extending a *scenario* wherein all socially-necessary material availability became as common and accessible as green grass, or digital goods.


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because now that's all that *anyone* needs -- a few basic ingredients from nature, subjected to fully-automated machine processes that spit out the required array of feedstocks, for *anyone* to use and individually benefit from, similar to the treatment of water today.

You think private interests aren't trying to get even more ownership of water resources?

*Of course* they are, but that's beside the point, too -- you're stuck in the 'private-commodity-production' mindset, and the world may not necessarily materially *function* that way for much longer.


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when in fact it's merely symptomatic of the private-property-based system of capitalism.

No, that's just silly, anti-scientific Marxist garbage. We know from studies of animal behavior that individual success and status are natural human goals for perfectly sound evolutionary reasons.

But such studies presuppose a determining factor of *scarcity* -- what if society, post-capitalism, was able to realistically produce an *abundance* of close to 100% of everything that everyone needed and wanted -- ?

Fine. Status would not be dependent on contribution to production. But there can never be enough status to go around.

You're merely making assumptions / idealism-type constructions about human capabilities --

It's not an assumption. It's anthropological and psychological fact.

You're making it sound as though all of humanity would somehow be forced to retain *tribalistic* social structures, for the sake of 'status', as material abundance became available and enabled true individualism.


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you just admitted that 'success' and 'status' are dependent on larger empirical material conditions, but then you ignore your own heightened consciousness, to baselessly reiterate your 'human nature' line.

It's not baseless.

Yes, it's *baseless* because you subscribe to an *idealistic* 'human nature' concept of an unchanging (elitist-class-privileged) model of society, and of the individual 'identity'. Humanity has 'already' transcended the locality-bound, *feudal* mode of production and social life, and so capitalism / commodity-production could soon become defunct as well, with material-boosted freedoms, combined with capitalism's own crisis-ridden existence, objectively serving to *undermine* the current social norms that many, like yourself, take to be timeless.


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So here's the point: What if the social conditions changed to such an extent that 'status' and 'success' were completely *obliterated* -- ? -- !

As in the ant society? Would we still be human?

Yeah, but the social *organization* of global society would be paradigmatically different, meaning a much-different *social consciousness* ('superstructure'), and material basis for social production ('base').


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Nothing that any person could do, because of prevailing abundance, could *not* be done by the next person -- the only differentiation remaining would be that of *willingness*, so that all anyone could say would be 'Well, I didn't want to go in that particular direction.' Everyone would have their own, individualistic 'successes' and 'status', but so would *everyone else*, as direct consequences of fully self-realized lives, and perhaps that reality alone would obliterate the conventional, social-group-type norms of 'status' and 'success' -- in short, there would no longer be 'leaders' and 'hangers-on' / followers, because no one would want to waste their *own* time on the coattails of anyone else.

Dreaming.

You yourself just admitted above that *individualism* would be more-enabled in the context of material abundance, so the *implication* of such would be that no one would be at any material *disadvantage* anymore -- no 'poverty' could exist.


---

While unfamiliar with that cultural product in particular, I think I get the gist of what you're saying -- unfortunately you're too dismissive of *social* improvements that are due to *technological* advances, such as cell phones and email, that take the inconvenience and drudgery out of socially-crucial activities like coordination and cooperation. (I would personally put the nascent driverless cars in this category, too.)

We don't know where technology is going to go, and Marxist claims of certainty and inevitability are groundless, risible, and roundly refuted by their consistent record of failure to date.

Marxism only claims that a civilization's prevailing mode of production is due to the existing balance of forces in its class struggle -- currently, between private ownership of the means of production and the dispossessed working class.


---

Human behavior and goals would change *drastically*, for the better, if lower-level material needs could be summarily satisfied,

I'm not sure that is the case. People seem to need something productive to do.

Well, what's 'productive', exactly -- maybe higher-level artistic and engineering creations -- ?

Relief of scarcity.

This is *circular* reasoning, unfortunately -- relief-of-scarcity applies to *material* concerns, which only begs the question of *humanity* and its existence. What does the relief of scarcity *empower* people to do, exactly -- ?


Humanities - Technology Chart 3.0

Spoiler: show

Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show

---

Your response is too casual and facile. My point stands that less gruntwork for everyone means a more-empowered *self-determination* for all individuals.

That's how it has worked out so far; it does not resemble Marx's predictions; and we could do a lot better if socialists and capitalists could be persuaded to give up fighting over their false dichotomy.

Haha -- good one. Like 'Why can't we all just get along' -- Haha!!

You're forgetting that a dollar in revenue can only go to ownership, at the expense of labor, or to labor, at the expense of ownership -- the class divide is made up of two mutually antagonistic interests, that of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.


---

I *don't* disagree with this -- can we agree that 'privilege' is currently based upon the pedestal of 'capital ownership'?

No. See above. Your use of "capital" nomenclature is not an aid to clarity. Privilege is based on law, and is not necessarily something that can be owned at all (though the privileged typically want to own it somehow). Consider white privilege under Jim Crow. Nothing to do with capital ownership.

White privilege *continues* to exist, because of the historical legacy of disproportionate white private-property wealth ownership, with the economics *also* being ingrained in law. Both *explicit* and *implicit* kinds of economic favoritism (as through wealth and/or racism) are empirical evidence of objective *oppression*, based on class and/or race and/or gender.


---

Well, this contention isn't fair, due to prevailing income inequality --

No, it's only unfair because of the prevailing injustice of the capitalist privilege system. Some income inequality is just.

No, *wealth ownership* is inherently unjust, because not everyone has access to ownership of capital goods.

That's why the world needs a proletarian revolution, so that productive means can all be *collectivized*, and used for humane human use, instead of for increasing the realm of exchange values (profit-making).


---

ownership of strong equity values, made from capital gains, has *nothing* to do with 'earned rewards'.

Very little, true, because returns obtained by earning can be competed away; returns to privilege cannot.

Okay, you've made your point abundantly clear that equity capital is relatively *more progressive* than rentier capital, which I acknowledge and agree-with, but I happen to go *further*, to say that the workers of the world could simply collectively control social production, to decisively obsolete all forms of capital *altogether*.


---

It's closer to a 'good bet' within casino capitalism, or ownership of a good expert-system automatic algorithm that tips the scales with faster-than-human buying and selling, 24/7/365.

Ownership of superhuman AI is not a privilege. Being able to outcompete others is not a privilege. Being legally entitled to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights is a privilege. You don't seem willing to come to grips with the difference between winning the competition to produce and winning the competition to take without producing.

No, I've just formally acknowledged the distinction -- but your own particular definition of 'producing' is *privileged* itself, to private ownership of capital, which excludes the majority of humankind.


---

*Precluding* the conventional rewards-for-labor practice would eliminate the entire 'realm' of exchange-values altogether, because then labor would no longer be *commodified* -- no reward / payment / wages for labor, no labor-commodification.

And thus no labor, and no production, and living like chimps or wolves.

Nope -- this is pure supposition on your part.

No it's not. That's how our remote ancestors actually lived under the conditions you specify.

You're conflating 'now' with 'then' -- you're ignoring all of the productive technologies and productive processes that have been developed since then, which today enable increasing automation and much-more materially leveraged human efforts. This abundance of material production can only be equitably administrated by the working class itself, on a collective basis, for the good of all worldwide.


---

Even today we already see solid evidence for the existence of your dreaded, ideologically-undesired 'altruistic' behavior on the part of millions and billions of people, as into disaster relief or everyday charitable activities.

Now who's engaging in pure supposition? I have nothing special against altruism. I just don't think it's very practical or natural as a human motivation.

And I agree -- my politics don't include any 'altruism' plank.

Revolution is in the interests of the proletariat itself, and isn't based on any kind of 'charity' whatsoever -- it's based on current technological material capacities, for social production.


---

The expansion of the conventional 'public sector', to *de-*privatize much material-economic activity, could yield a reality of the model 'communist gift-economy', where the private sector just couldn't *compete* with freely-given, massively parallelized cooperative inputs, for anyone's free-access, as we *already* see in the open-source software movement.

Software (information) is naturally abundant. Land and goods aren't. You think the communist model is an ideal. I beg to differ.

Land and produced goods *can* be as abundant as necessary to fulfill unmet human need for the same -- it doesn't take the entire world's surface area of land in order to produce food, etc., adequately. The material-economic problem is one of *distribution*, and not of capacity-for-production.


---

If you acknowledge *family* at all you'll see the most-regular social institution of pay-it-forward altruism -- why should *anyone* sacrifice their *own* time and life for an infantile creature that's only going to increasingly assert its own individuality, rebuffing its benefactors, as it grows up -- ?

Because Darwin says that's what will exist rather than not exist. The existent wins the contest of existence.

It's funny -- you're continually having to rely on the status quo for your argumentation, as though our current conditions are going to be *fixed* and *timeless* here-on-out.

You're not even considering that there could be *other ways* of raising new incoming generations of people -- this existence of social alternatives is *spoofed* in _Brave New World_, but the point remains: We don't *have* to rely on the commodified, nuclear family for this social task. Such could be *collectivized*:

[A post-capitalist] society would have an objective interest in *minimizing* the amount of work that would be socially necessary for the maintenance of a humane world. For the production of tangible objects or materials the call is for 'full automation' so that machinery will finally benefit *all*, without the realm of interceding exchange-values and the bribes to private ownership of profits.

So if work is to be minimized, how would a socialist- or communist-type society do that for the raising and socialization of the young -- ? The novel 'Brave New World' lampoons this social issue effectively as propaganda but that doesn't eliminate the issue itself.

Just offhand perhaps a post-capitalist more-advanced society wouldn't confer early-age raising onto the biological parents themselves (*gasp*), and/or perhaps it would be able to grant personal social *independence* to young ones at *very* early ages, with the use of physical prosthetics (for mobility), tablet-like button-to-speech interfaces (for communication), etc., to complement the overall world-society openness and post-scarcity general availability of humane resources.

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/19 ... ost2875353

---

So the only thing remaining in this calculus is the dimension of *scale* -- a worldwide 'human family' attitude is *certainly* realistically realizable, if only we could decisively, collectively do away with the institution of private property ownership, once and for all.

Nonsense. It's not private property that divides people. It's privilege, and the associated massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice.

No, it's *private property* that divides people, and the term for this is 'class'.


---

It's not unrealistic to contend that society can be productive on the whole without commodifying its labor -- as long as there's a 'critical mass' of necessarily-voluntary labor efforts for the common good, then individuals will all have their basic biological and social material needs provided-for, thereby freeing-up higher-level (qualitative) efforts, endlessly going-forward -- all without having to use exchange-value (monetary) measurements, per-individual, since that's an exploitative scheme, by design.

Like Marx, you haven't even understood what Adam Smith described so memorably as the invisible hand. The solution to the problem of economics is enabling people to labor for the common good BY laboring for their own good. Socialists don't understand that.

You're making it sound as though *all* labor is *necessarily* socialized, when that's *far* from the reality --

No, but relief of scarcity helps everyone.

No, it doesn't -- you're being supply-sided again. If people *can't afford* to purchase what's produced, under capitalism, then the scarcity (of use-values) *remains* because of poverty -- it's *artificial* scarcity.


---

much corporate wealth, for example, just sits stagnant and is *not* available for any potentially productive usage whatsoever.

I'm much more concerned that most of it is by its inherent character a legal entitlement to take rather than a power to produce.

You're again forgetting your position on this matter -- why aren't you *railing* against all of this non-equity, or rentier-type *wealth* that exists, only to potentially collect elitist interest and rent payments -- ?


---

The 'primitive accumulation of capital' dynamic continues unabated and *balkanizes* ownership into endlessly subdivided specialized scales of magnitude, the *opposite* direction from societal *collectivization*

Marxists are permanently unable to understand economic processes like accumulation and increasing inequality because they refuse to distinguish between rightful and wrongful ownership.

You're simply *excusing* and *apologizing for* the world's existing *income inequality*, due to capitalism's class divide, based on private property ownership over the means of mass industrial production.

There's no 'right' or 'wrong' ownership because the only economic rule at-play is the 'Golden Rule' -- those with the gold make the rules. Moralistic-type commentary, like yours over 'right' and 'wrong' ownership, is *ineffectual*. There needs to be a *working class* revolution to wipe away private property ownership altogether, so that existing material productivity processes can benefit *everyone*, instead of just benefitting those who happen to own wealth.


---

Well, these well-guided or otherwise socialist-nationalist developments did *not* happen in political incubators -- there were overarching socio-political developments, like imperialist Western invasions, that surrounded them, so you're taking the historical results to be necessarily *correct* outcomes,

If by "correct" you mean inevitable.

Okay, 'inevitable' is better, since it implicitly acknowledges *causal* factors, as from above, that negatively impacted and curtailed historical efforts at left-nationalizations and outright revolutions, as in Russia in 1917.


---

and you're placing all blame on those nascent national reconfigurations themselves (and/or their particular guiding ideologies),

Not all, but most.

Correct -- so which *is* it: Are you recognizing that these national reconfigurations were impacted *externally*, as by Western-type invasions, or *aren't* you?


---

which boils down to a 'might-makes-right' mindset, since the strongest player in each geopolitical contest ultimately prevailed, with the left-leaners being 'losers'. That's what you're saying.

No, I'm saying they were all losers because they were intellectually weak, and thus inherently incompetent to address their nations' economic problems: they could not relieve scarcity.

Well, you don't *get* to victim-blame, not when you've already acknowledged the introduction of *external* militaristic factors that *curtailed* these novel socio-political efforts and developments, like that of the world-historical appearance of the 'soviet' form of social production.

Workers' Councils

According to the official historiography of the Soviet Union, the first workers' council (soviet) formed in May 1905 in Ivanovo (north-east of Moscow) during the 1905 Russian Revolution (Ivanovsky Soviet). However, in his memoirs, the Russian Anarchist Volin claims that he witnessed the beginnings of the St Petersburg Soviet in January 1905. The Russian workers were largely organized[by whom?] at the turn of the 20th century, leading to a government-sponsored trade-union leadership. In 1905, as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) increased the strain on Russian industrial production, the workers began to strike and rebel. The soviets represented an autonomous workers' movement, one that broke free from the government's oversight of workers' unions. Soviets sprang up throughout the industrial centers of Russia, usually organizing meetings at the factory level. These soviets disappeared after the revolution of 1905, but re-emerged under socialist leadership during the revolutions of 1917.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_(council)#Workers'_Councils

---

So you'd prefer to see the political-collectivist aspect take a back-seat to the existing status-quo *economic* aspect --

No, I'd prefer to see complete abandonment of both the Marxist political-collectivist aspect and the status-quo capitalist aspect.

No, you wouldn't on the latter item, since you've already made explicit arguments that defend it.


---

that's just being ideological, and is also apologizing for Western imperialism and its military invasions. Might-makes-right, according to you.

That's a strange thing for a Marxist to be accusing anyone of...

How so?


---

and is also apologizing for Western imperialism and its military invasions.

No. When did the West invade socialist China? Oh, no, wait a minute, that's right: it was socialist China that invaded, conquered, and colonized Tibet. When did the West invade or attack Venezuela, hmmmm? Socialists need to man up and own their failures.

Well, there's *this* Western imperialism that far preceded the Chinese Civil War:

Boxer Rebellion
(庚子拳亂)

The Boxer Rebellion (拳亂), Boxer Uprising, or Yihetuan Movement (義和團運動) was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising that took place in China between 1899 and 1901, toward the end of the Qing dynasty. They were motivated by proto-nationalist sentiments and by opposition to Western colonialism and the Christian missionary activity that was associated with it.

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

And then there was the expelling of the invading Imperial Japanese Army and the Chinese nationalists:

Chinese Civil War

國共內戰 国共内战 (Kuomintang-Communist Civil War)

The Chinese Civil War was a war fought between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China and the Communist Party of China (CPC). Although particular attention is paid to the four years of Chinese Communist Revolution from 1945 to 1949, the war actually started in August 1927, with the White Terror at the end of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition, and essentially ended when major hostilities between the two sides ceased in 1950.[9] The conflict took place in two stages: the first between 1927 and 1937, and the second from 1946 to 1950, with the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937–1945 separating them. The war marked a major turning point in modern Chinese history, with the Communists gaining control of mainland China and establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, forcing the Republic of China (ROC) to retreat to Taiwan. It resulted in a lasting political and military standoff between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, with the ROC in Taiwan and the PRC on mainland China with both officially claiming to be the legitimate government of all China.

The war represented an ideological split between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Nationalist Party of China (or Kuomintang). Conflict continued intermittently until late 1937, when the two parties came together to form the Second United Front to counter the Imperial Japanese Army threat and to prevent the country from crumbling. Full-scale civil war in China resumed in 1946, a year after the end of hostilities with the Empire of Japan in September 1945. Four years later came the cessation of major military activity, with the newly founded People's Republic of China controlling mainland China (including the island of Hainan), and the Republic of China's jurisdiction restricted to Taiwan, Penghu, Quemoy, Matsu and several outlying islands.

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

---

Might-makes-right, according to you.

No, right makes might.

Not *automatically*, it doesn't, otherwise we'd all be living in socialism right now.


---

You really think that the difference between equity capital and rentier capital is so great as to be like a *valid* form of capitalism ('equities'), and an *invalid* form of capitalism ('rentier') -- ?

I do indeed, and I've proved it, if by "equity capital" you mean ownership of producer goods and by "rentier capital" you mean ownership of privileges.

Yet both forms of ownership are of *private property*, which the world's working class does *not* have access to. Hence the class struggle.


---

[C]apitalism is defined as private ownership of the means of production (land and capital goods), the only corrupt part of which is private landowning. But there is no logical link between success or material reward and landowning.

Let's generalize this status to 'property-owning'

No, let's not, because that elides the very crux of the matter as I already explained.

What happens if productive equity investments suddenly yield more than expected or planned-for, thus generating a material *surplus* -- ?

We are happy.

Smartass shithead, huh?

The *issue* is that you have no way of *storing* surpluses / excesses in your 'equity-only' model of capitalism, which is inherently *unrealistic* as a result.


---

Where would that surplus *go* -- ?

To those who were willing and able to pay for it.

So dividends-only, while wages to the workers who *produced* the goods and services would *stagnate* or *decrease*.


---

Unless *every cent* of gains was automatically, immediately plowed-back into more equities, there would be an empirical *need* for inactive piles and hoards of rentier-type wealth that would just be sitting there.

Nonsense. Surplus production cannot be converted into privilege, let alone somehow automatically morphing into it.

Well, let's step through it -- surplus cash is *synonymous* with rentier capital / assets, because that cash, unneeded / unused for equity investments, *could* just sit in a bank account and collect interest.


---

You seem to think that you can just personally summarily pick which is 'good' capital and which is 'bad' capital,

I have told you how to tell the difference. You just refuse to do so.

No, I just outlined how your professed, custom version of capitalism is unrealistic, because it would require *all* capital, everywhere, to *always* be actively invested, *all of the time*. As soon as *anyone* has any surplus cash, it's *automatically* rentier-type capital, loathed by you, but necessarily existing all-the-same as an unavoidable, endemic aspect of capitalism.


---

to fuel your custom ideology where only *productive* capital exists.

That's the idea. No more taking by owning privileges.

Of course I know your idea, but it's a non-starter, as I've just described above.


---

What about *capital goods*, like bank loans -- ?

Banksters' privilege of creating money de novo as loan proceeds is not a capital good.

Well, yes, technically it *is* a capital good, whether you agree with it or not, because it's currently *functioning* that way. You have no way to neatly divide rentier-type capital from equity-type capital, to excise rentier capital out of the system's functioning as a whole, as I've already described.


---

Then you have an objective need for the existence of *rentier*-type capital, for availability to *equity*-type activities, as with any type of financial leveraging.

No. Owning a privilege of creating money to charge interest on it is not the same as saving money and charging interest for its use.

Whatever. All you're doing is *complaining*, and selectively at that since you don't carry over your outrage into any of your scenarios.


---

So then what's your solution here -- how *should* land be managed, or co-managed, especially within the framework of productive equity-type investments?

Everyone should have free, secure tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity, and those who want to deprive others of more than that should pay the market rent for the extra to the community of those thus deprived. Basically a land value tax with a modest, universal individual exemption.

'Community' -- ?

And how would the 'community' parcel-out the 'market rent' paid for 'extra' land taken and used? For that matter, how would the 'community' decide on the *boundaries* of land to be parceled-out, versus the land of *other*, neighboring communities?

If it's a 'land value tax' then who or what is the standing authority to *collect* such a 'tax', and how did they get to that position of authority in the first place?


---

Land isn't worth *shit* in productive terms unless it's been worked-on by some kind of labor -- it needs tilling, planting, watering, fertilizing, pest control, harvesting, etc.

No, that's just objectively false, as proved by the astronomical market value of raw, unimproved land in advantageous locations. You are blatantly contradicting yourself by claiming that land is useless until someone has used it. But... why would anyone use it unless it were already useful, hmmmmmmmmm?

It's 'useful' in rentier-type exchange-value terms, as a non-productive asset, but it's not going to have any *equity* value, which you so favor, unless *labor* is exploited for the sake of turning it into something that can readily provide new commodities, like food.


---

Try again.

I already won, junior.

Yeah, fun -- the only point that I see you're correct on is the one where you admit that collectivist-type planning and liberated-labor would enable a material abundance and a full social-individualism:

[T]he advent of *collectivized full automation* of productive machinery / means would mean that individual material desires would *more easily* be satisfiable, compared to conditions today, so it would be a paradoxical combination of more-enabled *individualization*, as through personal selection ('consumption'), with more-enabled *collectivization*, by combined consent, particularly over socially-necessary *productive* ('production') processes.

That's never been the case yet, though it might happen in the future. I would venture that such productive powers would lead to a more individualistic society as people were freed from the need to please or even deal with others in order to live.

[Stardust]

You're implicitly describing the class divide as simply existing on a few feudal-lord-like *privileges*,

That is in fact what creates class.

Roughly speaking -- the capitalist 'superstructure' obviously favors private property owners, and moreso on the *rentier* capital side of things, which is then comparable to the conditions of past feudalism and slavery, since direct expropriation of labor's fruits was enabled simply by pre-existing asset ownership. The more *modern* definition, in today's world of commodity-fetishism, has to do with labor's own collective reproduction of its labor-power,…

The worker is underpaid because he has been deprived of his right to liberty by privilege, not because his employer makes a profit.

It's not 'either-or', it's *both* -- you're trying to create a false dichotomy between the _political_ and _economic_ aspects of oppression and exploitation, respectively.

You are falsely assuming no one but the worker contributes to production. The capital provider also contributes, and thereby earns a return.

No, I'm *not* making any erroneous assertions that only workers make material inputs into the production process, but it's important to note that *all* material and value derive from labor-power -- all commodities / assets, throughout all of class history, could not have been created unless *someone* toiled to produce them. Once created by laborers and expropriated by property-owners, such assets and goods and services can accurately be called 'dead labor'.

Capitalism is defined as private ownership of the means of production (land and capital goods), the only corrupt part of which is private landowning. But there is no logical link between success or material reward and landowning.

You really think that the difference between equity capital and rentier capital is so great as to be like a *valid* form of capitalism ('equities'), and an *invalid* form of capitalism ('rentier') -- ?
What happens if productive equity investments suddenly yield more than expected or planned-for, thus generating a material *surplus* -- ? Where would that surplus *go* -- ? Unless *every cent* of gains was automatically, immediately plowed-back into more equities, there would be an empirical *need* for inactive piles and hoards of rentier-type wealth that would just be sitting there.

You seem to think that you can just personally summarily pick which is 'good' capital and which is 'bad' capital, to fuel your custom ideology where only *productive* capital exists. What about *capital goods*, like bank loans -- ? Then you have an objective need for the existence of *rentier*-type capital, for availability to *equity*-type activities, as with any type of financial leveraging.

Well said Chris, thank you!
I think this is the nucleus of your argument here, in response to the unrealistic claims of the above referred person, and his insistence on the possibility of taking away one important aspect of the prevailing political economy- namely the 'rentier capital' and its accompanying privileges.

Anyone who has only studied as far as volume one of ‘Capital’ should have the general idea about the nature of the various forms of the capital, and their inter-connection due to sharing of the same structure: expropriation of surplus value. Let alone those claiming to have actually read volume three…

The example of such ‘wishful dreaming’, would be that of a gardener who kept cactuses in his garden, but went on complaining about the problems caused by their thorns. Well, someone has to tell him that as long as you keep the plants, that issue persists; as the thorns and the flowers are different parts of the same organism. Therefore, if you do not wish to be bothered by the thorns, there is no other option but uprooting the whole plant!

[Truth To Power]

I think this is the nucleus of your argument here, in response to the unrealistic claims of the above referred person, and his insistence on the possibility of taking away one important aspect of the prevailing political economy- namely the 'rentier capital' and its accompanying privileges.

See my refutation of ckaihatsu. I have explained why my statements are objectively correct and his Marxist horse$#!+ is objectively wrong.

Anyone who has only studied as far as volume one of ‘Capital’ should have the general idea about the nature of the various forms of the capital, and their inter-connection due to sharing of the same structure: expropriation of surplus value.

I have read enough to know what it says, and thought enough to understand why it is wrong: a reward obtained in return for commensurate contribution is not expropriation.

Let alone those claiming to have actually read volume three…

True, there are probably only a handful of people on earth who have had the masochistic impulse to plow through all of Vol 3 of Capital...

The example of such ‘wishful dreaming’, would be that of a gardener who kept cactuses in his garden, but went on complaining about the problems caused by their thorns. Well, someone has to tell him that as long as you keep the plants, that issue persists; as the thorns and the flowers are different parts of the same organism. Therefore, if you do not wish to be bothered by the thorns, there is no other option but uprooting the whole plant!

That's an invalid analogy because there are lots of plants that don't have thorns. Private landowning is certainly an inherent part of capitalism, but that doesn't mean it (and other forms of privilege) can't be eliminated in a better system that isn't capitalism, but also isn't socialism (see Hong Kong and more recently China).

[Drlee]

And now a short pause for a word from our sponsors:

[Decky]

And now a short pause for a word from our sponsors:

Why do American's use tramp to mean slag? A tramp is a homeless person who "tramps" from place to place.

[Drlee]

Why do American's use tramp to mean slag? A tramp is a homeless person who "tramps" from place to place.

Because we a) do not speak the queens English and b) slag, for us, is something that comes out of a refining process.

I am fine with the term "slag". I am not OK with spelling color - colour. It seems so...wasteful.

[blackjack21]

I am fine with the term "slag". I am not OK with spelling color - colour. It seems so...wasteful.

My doting grandfather was from the UK. As a kid, I got third place in the spelling bee because of colour and behaviour. Bastards!

[Drlee]

And they would inflict that on a young child. But then they inflict public school on them too. A few years at Harrow and we would all be writing 50 Shades of Gray.

[Decky]

And they would inflict that on a young child. But then they inflict public school on them too. A few years at Harrow and we would all be writing 50 Shades of Gray.

That's hardly fair; the vast majority of people go to state comprehensives (with a few middle class people faking being religious to to to the god botherer schools). Only the very very rich send their kids away to a public school to be bummed for their whole childhood. It is in no way normal (well unless your sample is businessmen or a Tory cabinet).

[Rich]

Only the very very rich send their kids away to a public school to be bummed for their whole childhood. It is in no way normal (well unless your sample is businessmen or a Tory cabinet).

A typical Marxist lie. About 10% of secondary school pupils go to independent schools. Grammar Schools were brilliant they allowed smart working and Middle class kids to get a good education without grovelling to rich people for a scholarship. The trouble is that Marxist hypocrites like Dianne Abbot, who came from a Grammar school herself insist on shutting down the Grammar schools while sending their kids to private schools.

[SolarCross]

I am not OK with spelling color - colour. It seems so...wasteful.

All the words like colour, armour, valour, parlour entered into English via french speaking danish invaders known as the Normans. They are french words hence the foppish spelling. In fairness to yanks they are not so much mangling the english language by stripping out the frenchified "u" in "our" as subjecting the slimy french words to a damn good anglicising. However it remains that the proper way to spell the words is how the British do it because it is our damn language, if you don't like it then get your own!

[Drlee]

They are french words hence the foppish spelling.

I feel for you, saddled with French words. We have the same problem even worse. Yankee is DUTCH!


The shame.

[Hindsite]

In the USA, complete socialism would require big changes in the U.S. Constitution. I believe socialism is like people eating their own flesh thinking they are doing a good thing instead of destroying themselves.

[ckaihatsu]

In the USA, complete socialism would require big changes in the U.S. Constitution. I believe socialism is like people eating their own flesh thinking they are doing a good thing instead of destroying themselves.

Complete socialism would go *beyond* just the U.S., to become a *worldwide* revolutionary state of affairs.

Most people don't benefit from capitalism's current redistribution of wealth to the top, so any 'eating' would be of the flesh of the *rich* ('Eat the rich'), and not of one's own.

[Hindsite]

Complete socialism would go *beyond* just the U.S., to become a *worldwide* revolutionary state of affairs.

Most people don't benefit from capitalism's current redistribution of wealth to the top, so any 'eating' would be of the flesh of the *rich* ('Eat the rich'), and not of one's own.

Even if you consider "eating the flesh of the rich" by redistributing their wealth, as being okay, there comes a point that there are no more rich capitalist flesh to eat. That is why Socialist countries always fail.

[ckaihatsu]

Even if you consider "eating the flesh of the rich" by redistributing their wealth, as being okay, there comes a point that there are no more rich capitalist flesh to eat. That is why Socialist countries always fail.

Hmmmmm, you're missing the point and distorting the intended meaning.

There are no historical precedents (that I know of) for the phrase -- rather, it's meant as an antidote / anodyne to bourgeois anti-humane social policies, like the current neoliberal austerity-type ones, in that if people are *so* repressed by government policies that favor the rich (like Trump's tax cuts), then there would be nothing material left for sustenance than the bodies of the rich themselves, since they're the ones who created and backed those hunger-ignoring government policies.

[Hindsite]

Hmmmmm, you're missing the point and distorting the intended meaning.

There are no historical precedents (that I know of) for the phrase -- rather, it's meant as an antidote / anodyne to bourgeois anti-humane social policies, like the current neoliberal austerity-type ones, in that if people are *so* repressed by government policies that favor the rich (like Trump's tax cuts), then there would be nothing material left for sustenance than the bodies of the rich themselves, since they're the ones who created and backed those hunger-ignoring government policies.

What point I haven't missed is that in our capitalist system, a poor person can become rich and a rich person can become poor. In a socialist system, eventually, only the government leaders will remain rich by taking from those that are now been made poor. The most recent example of what socialism does to a rich country is how it has made Venezuela a poor country.

[Truth To Power]

I believe socialism is like people eating their own flesh thinking they are doing a good thing instead of destroying themselves.

It's more like eating the seed corn. Unlike eating your own flesh, eating the seed corn feels just fine. The reason capitalism consistently outperforms socialism is that when socialists steal factories from capitalists, there are fewer factories; but when capitalists steal land from everyone else, the amount of land stays just the same.

If socialism is like eating the seed corn, capitalism is like running on a treadmill: it feels like you must be getting somewhere; but the faster you run, the faster the treadmill goes. You can see the privileged rich rising higher and higher, and you assume they must be running even faster than you. But in reality, they are riding up at their leisure on the escalator that your treadmill powers.

What point I haven't missed is that in our capitalist system, a poor person can become rich

Yes, by extraordinary efforts and thrift, a gifted few can outrun everyone else on the treadmill and clamber up onto the escalator. The fact that a few are strong enough to run a race while carrying someone else on their back does not mean those riding on the backs of weaker people are not a burden to them, or that it is somehow the fault of the weaker that they cannot run with someone riding on their back.

and a rich person can become poor.

Yes, by extraordinary foolishness, profligacy and sloth (alcohol and drugs help a lot), a rich person can fall off the escalator and land down on the treadmill.

In a socialist system, eventually, only the government leaders will remain rich by taking from those that are now been made poor.

Just as under capitalism, the privileged eventually form a separate parasitic caste that the poor cannot enter and only political action can dislodge. See the history of the patroons in New York's Hudson Valley.

The most recent example of what socialism does to a rich country is how it has made Venezuela a poor country.

The consistency with which socialists embrace foolish and destructive government policies has convinced me that they do not actually want to solve social problems. Social problems are their excuse, their rationalization for seizing power, which is their true goal.

[Hindsite]

It's more like eating the seed corn. Unlike eating your own flesh, eating the seed corn feels just fine. The reason capitalism consistently outperforms socialism is that when socialists steal factories from capitalists, there are fewer factories; but when capitalists steal land from everyone else, the amount of land stays just the same.

If socialism is like eating the seed corn, capitalism is like running on a treadmill: it feels like you must be getting somewhere; but the faster you run, the faster the treadmill goes. You can see the privileged rich rising higher and higher, and you assume they must be running even faster than you. But in reality, they are riding up at their leisure on the escalator that your treadmill powers.

Running on a treadmill may help your health, but capitalist are interested in increasing wealth more than their health.

[Truth To Power]

Running on a treadmill may help your health,

If you don't do it too long, or too often. The massive government interventions characteristic of advanced capitalist economies -- welfare, progressive income tax, minimum wages, union monopolies, publicly funded education, health care and pensions, labor standards laws, etc., etc. -- rescue working people from being run to death on capitalism's treadmill.

but capitalist are interested in increasing wealth more than their health.

No, they are mostly interested in riding the escalator.