Why do people not understand socialism ? - Page 13 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#15232323
ckaihatsu wrote:
And yet, *all* consumer goods / utilities / use-values, *and* production goods, land, and labor are all subject to *pricing* (exchange values), under capitalism.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because unlike socialists, capitalists understand that the market is a vastly more accurate and efficient information processing system than politically appointed commissars.



It objectively depends on whether there's *scarcity* around -- I'd tend to agree that the market mechanism is good at *initial economic organizing*, though historically at the human cost of genocide and slavery, but once markets are *saturated* (which develops quickly) (as for gold supplies in colonialist Spain), then the market mechanism becomes a true *monster*, since it needs *destruction*, as from warfare, to *destroy valuations* -- particularly that of the *competitor* -- to realize new markets when there otherwise *are none*. Hence two world wars, etc.

I'm not *for* Stalinist bureaucratic-elitist central planning, but it *is* as validly nationalist as what any *other* country has done, government-and-investment-wise, so a big *whatever* on that.



Analysis of Soviet-type planning

There are two fundamental ways scholars have carried out an analysis of Soviet-type economic planning. The first involves adapting standard neoclassical economic models and theories to analyze the Soviet economic system. This paradigm stresses the importance of Pareto efficiency standard.[6]

In contrast to this approach, scholars such as Pawel Dembinski argue that neoclassical tools are somewhat inappropriate for evaluating Soviet-type planning because they attempt to quantify and measure phenomena specific to capitalist-based economies.[7] They contend that because standard economic models rely on assumptions not fulfilled in the Soviet system (especially the assumption of economic rationality underlying decision-making), the results obtained from a neoclassical analysis will distort the actual effects of STP. These other scholars proceed along a different course by trying to engage with STP on its own terms, investigating the philosophical, historical and political influences that gave rise to STP whilst evaluating its economic successes and failures (theoretical and actual) with reference to those contexts.

The USSR practiced some form of central planning beginning in 1918 with War Communism until it dissolved in 1991, although the type and extent of planning was of a different nature before imperative centralized planning was introduced in the 1930s. While there were many subtleties to the various forms of economic organization the USSR employed during this 70-year time period, enough features were shared that scholars have broadly examined advantages and disadvantages of Soviet-type economic planning.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet-ty ... e_planning



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you *really* disagree with such 'prices', due to capitalism, or are you just putting out a public-relations-type *press release* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Price just shows where quantity supplied equals quantity demanded. Disagreeing with prices is as childish as disagreeing with the calculator that shows your checking account is overdrawn: the calculator is not the problem.



Yeaaahhhh, you're oversimplifying -- prices are *vastly* more complex than a calculator, because we're dealing with its double-duty, regarding economic information. It *begins* with the cost of producing the commodity initially, but then is subject to *post-production* market fluctuations, based on the balance of economic supply and demand, which has *nothing* to do with the initial cost of production.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Meaning what, exactly -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Meaning that your anti-economic drivel has been tried, and it has always failed as spectacularly as doing away with the farmer and letting the animals run the farm would.



ckaihatsu wrote:
My politics are for *workers power*,



Truth To Power wrote:
But in fact, your intention is to be the one who actually has the power, which you will claim to exercise on the workers' behalf.



Nope, again you're thinking of Stalinist-type *strongman* rule, on a *nationalist* basis.

You can stop your demonizing *stereotyping* anytime now.


ckaihatsu wrote:
and certainly the workers themselves don't need any formal 'institution', not even their own, for knowledge on how to run the very workplace that they've been working at



Truth To Power wrote:
Yes they do. They haven't the slightest idea how to run it any more than you do, or any more than the draft animals who pull the plow and the chickens who lay the eggs know how to run a farm. Do you really think construction workers know what to do on the job site without any architects or engineers to tell them? REALLY??? That is as absurd as your claim that assembly line workers know how to run the factory. You are merely proving that you have never actually worked at such a job: if you had, you would know better.



Bullshit.

You can't admit that wage workers are the ones producing the actual commodity that's sold for revenue and profit, so you have to *bluster*, as here, when it's the workers who are the ones *at work*, doing the actual *labor* for the company.


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- and certainly moreso than the absentee-employer.



Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. It is the employer's decisions, initiative and labor that made the production system exist rather than not exist, and operate productively rather than sit idle and decay.



Still *not necessary*, though, now, at the communications level of *walkie-talkies*, and phone calls, and greater.

Again, you're *glorifying* because today all that's needed would be a workplace-specific *wiki page*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Recall that we *agree* on what the *non-productive* sectors of the political economy are



Truth To Power wrote:
No we don't. You think the entrepreneur who creates the production system and the factory owner who provides the building, machinery, etc. are non-productive.



Well, yeah, I extend the 'non-productive' terrain right into the internal corporate *staff hierarchy*, because all 'internal' tasks *are* non-productive as well -- they *don't* produce the product that the company sells.


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- the bourgeois government (overhead / bureaucracy), and all rentier-type values, particularly land.



Truth To Power wrote:
If you think government is non-productive, try no government. And it is not land that has no value, it is the landowner.



Okay, get that cleared with your higher-ups, and we'll go -- I'm not a 'no-government' anarchist, exactly, but it'll at least be a 'reset' away from capitalism and its private property.

Land *should* just be a raw-natural-resource *input* into the proletarian baseline, for subsequent collectivist factory-production, but unfortunately it's currently a *gargantuan* business under capitalism, by being commodified, and everyone organically needing to buy food and such.


ckaihatsu wrote:
These two 'sectors' of the capitalist economy could be eliminated overnight and it wouldn't directly impact on the ability of workers to run their workplaces.



Truth To Power wrote:
Right, because the workers' ability to run their workplaces would still be zero.



That's a bit of *levity* for you, huh -- ? A real stretch....


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's *not* nonsense



Truth To Power wrote:
It is most definitely nonsense.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- the social conventions, inherited from past historical developments by default,



Truth To Power wrote:
No, the institutional arrangements that have been found necessary to effect the desired outcome: relief of scarcity.



Again, you're off-your-rocker, because capitalism is all about *artificial scarcity*, as through warfare, or the current unnecessary energy crisis, to tamp down otherwise capitalist *overproduction* and runaway buying power -- which threatens greater egalitarianism in the class divide.


ckaihatsu wrote:
are to try to 'valuate' the work-product contribution, from wage labor, *regardless* of what all workers have *produced* for society in total.



Truth To Power wrote:
Right: each individual worker is being paid for what HE does, not what all the other workers have done, because they were already paid for their contributions, just as he is being paid for his. You are trying to put over the bizarre notion that each worker should also be paid for what all the other workers have done throughout history. It's just transparent idiocy.



All you're doing is blaming the victim, since the working class the world over has been victimized by *ruling class militaries* -- so, to be balanced, try addressing militarist *imperialism* and warfare, and the legacy of one-sided class violence. Your anti-statist credentials are practically *nonexistent* from disuse.

Wages are *not* fair -- wages are *economic exploitation*.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
This is sheerly *economic gatekeeping*, meaning capitalist *overproduction* and leaving cities' worth of vehicles (or whatever) to bake in the sun instead of actually put into people's hands, for actual usage.



Truth To Power wrote:
See? You refuse to know what is right in front of your face. What do you think happens if you give away the vehicles a factory owner has produced to people who want one? Do you think the recipients of the free vehicles are going to want to pay for production of the next lot of vehicles? And when those don't sell because you gave away the previous lot to the people who were in the market for a vehicle, are you going to give away the next lot, too? How long do you think a factory can operate that way? Oh, wait a minute, that's right: the workers will somehow keep the factory humming despite having no revenue to pay for supplies, power, etc.



Okay, I'll find the paperwork for that, and you can sign-off, to make it official.

You're really worried about *supplies*, and *power*, and such -- ? You're showing that workers have to have a full-scale *revolution*, so that all productive control is transferred-over more or less at *once*, otherwise, yes, there *would* be those incompatible logistical wrinkles popping up.


Truth To Power wrote:
Give your head a shake. Seriously. It's time.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Your politics would rather uphold *artifical scarcity*, than to make social use of that which exists, for people who *need* that which has been produced.



Truth To Power wrote:
There is nothing artificial about the fact that production has to be paid for, and the most appropriate people to pay for it are those who consume it.



There's no actual, material *consumption*, though, and that's the point -- there's no *advance planning* under capitalism, because everything economic / productive is economically *speculative*, with the piling-in into hot markets, which causes overproduction, which causes a glut of unused production afterward, with satiated markets, but not necessarily satiated *people*, if they can't afford the production at the end of the day.

The political economy shouldn't be rewarding *speculators* and *hoarders* -- workers at the actual workplaces are in the position to be much more *hands on*, *internetworked*, and *intentional* over what gets produced, and how, and for whom.


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Truth To Power wrote:
Need is self-evidently already decoupled from work. What you want is to decouple production from consumption, deserving from getting. I.e., you want injustice.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Injustice' for *who* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
For the producers. You want the productive to be systematically robbed of the fruits of their labor.



'Robbed' is dramatic and sensationalist -- the 'producer', or equity capital investor, makes a *bet*, and is nowhere *near* the point of production itself anyway, so let's just call a 'bad bet', that they were ready to lose out on anyway. The unsold, unused 'surplus' from overproduction could always revert back to the control of those who *produced* it, the wage workers, so there's a political reform right there.


ckaihatsu wrote:
For *capitalist valuations* -- that are already *tanking*, as we speak -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
You are trying to change the subject again. You often do that when you realize you have been proved wrong.



The 'producers' are really just equity investors looking out for their own acquisitive interests -- their capital takes on a life / role of its *own*, and is *not* the same thing as the investor persons themselves.

The *markets* are looking really shitty right now, is all I'm saying. Don't take it so *personally*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You want to *couple* equity valuations to everything that's been produced, regardless of social-legitimacy



Truth To Power wrote:
People owning what they produce is socially legitimate.



If that were true then the wage workers *would* be in collective control of their own workplaces, and we'd be living in socialism right now.


ckaihatsu wrote:
or pricing volatility, even to where stuff just *rots away in the sun* instead of being made available for actual unmet social needs.



Truth To Power wrote:
I want those who produce to own what they produce, because that is the path not only to accurate incentives and allocative efficiency, but to justice.



That would be the wage workers then.


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's *still* thinking that whatever happened in the past automatically *condemns* us to the identical fate as before.



Truth To Power wrote:
How many times does history have to prove you wrong -- how many more millions do you have to murder -- before you will become willing to consider the possibility that you actually are wrong?



No one here is 'murdering' -- you're dramatizing politics, according to past *history*, in your own twisted way. Again, the larger picture is that the Allies *invaded* nascent proletarian revolutions, so your attempts at political-economy *character assassination* really don't go very far.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Remember, the *actual history* of 'socialism' (loosely), is one of international imperialist *invasion*, so anyone could readily say that socialism has been *stunted* historically, from without.



Truth To Power wrote:
That is utter garbage with no basis in fact. The socialist USSR was doing a fine job of invading and annexing its neighbors and slaughtering its own citizens long before the Nazis invaded it. There was no international invasion of socialist China. Quite the contrary: socialist China invaded Korea, Tibet (which it conquered and annexed), and even fellow socialist Vietnam. The horrors of the Great Leap Forward (in which the workers' incompetence wrecked the nation's industrial base) and the Cultural Revolution speak for themselves. The botched "invasion" of Cuba was so insignificant it can be dismissed.



No argument on the China stuff, though China *was* invaded and victimized by Japanese imperialism.

You're *digressing*, though, so here's the full background on what I'm talking about:



Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions which began in 1918. The Allies first had the goal of helping the Czechoslovak Legion in securing supplies of munitions and armaments in Russian ports. At times between 1918 and 1920 the Czechoslovak Legion controlled the entire Trans-Siberian Railway and several major cities in Siberia. By 1919 the goal was to help the White forces in the Russian Civil War. When the Whites collapsed the forces were withdrawn by 1920 (or 1922 in the case of Japan).[20]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War



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ckaihatsu wrote:
How is a circulating cash-based economy supposed to circulate cash when virtually *all valuations* are economically with *capital ownership* since the number of actual wage workers, receiving wages, has shrunk down to *trifling* numbers -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
By compensating everyone justly for the removal of their rights to liberty by exclusive land tenure. The more those rights are worth -- i.e., the greater the unimproved rental value of the land -- the greater the necessary compensation.



*Or*, land could be treated like any *other* kind of capital -- aggrandized over the centuries by capitalists, by exploiting wage workers -- and simply *collectivized* by the world's working class, in its own, non-profit-making interests.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Extending the scenario to one of *full* automation, how is *anyone* to be able to *purchase* anything off the assembly line when *no one* is afforded employment, or wages / money, due to *full automation* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
The Anti-Economist Marx to the contrary, employment was never the problem. Scarcity has always been the problem. With full automation in a geoist economy, scarcity is abolished and everyone has enough to live well on by being justly compensated for the removal of their rights to liberty by exclusive land tenure. Socialism can never produce abundance because its basic tenet is to hate, rob and kill the producers.



Yeah, still not a *Stalinist*, since the last two minutes elapsed, so you're beating a dead unicorn there.

Since you're actively defending capitalism to the point of its dynamic of *artificial scarcity*, you don't get to say that capitalism *alleviates* scarcity, because it *doesn't*, past the point of market saturation:



Economic actions that create artificial scarcity

Cartels, monopolies and/or rentier capitalism

Competition regulation, where regulatory uncertainty and policy ambiguity deters investment.

Copyright, when used to disallow copying or disallow access to sources. Proprietary software is an example. Copyleft software is a counterexample where copyleft advocates use copyright licenses to guarantee the right to copy, access, view, and change the source code, and allow others to do the same to derivatives of that code.[4]

Patent

The Agricultural Adjustment Act

Hoarding, including cornering the market

Deliberate destruction[5][6]

Paywalls[7]

Torrent poisoning such as poisoning bittorrent with half broken copies of music and videos to drive up prices when instead streamed from places the author has deals with

Non-fungible tokens



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificia ... l_scarcity



So which is it going to be -- are you *for* the commercial monopolization of natural-monopolies (for less market competitiveness and higher prices), or are you *against* the commercial monopolization of natural-monopolies, besides just the single case of 'land'?

You *claim* to be against monopolization, but you're *for* strong currency values, or monetarism, which is a *disincentive* to equity capital investments in the commodity-production process.

Ever considered seeing a therapist?
#15232406
ckaihatsu wrote:It objectively depends on whether there's *scarcity* around

There's always scarcity.
-- I'd tend to agree that the market mechanism is good at *initial economic organizing*, though historically at the human cost of genocide and slavery,

Garbage. Genocide and slavery were not caused by markets, they were caused by greed. Markets simply emerged to reconcile differing utilities.
but once markets are *saturated* (which develops quickly) (as for gold supplies in colonialist Spain),

The gold market has never been close to saturated.
then the market mechanism becomes a true *monster*, since it needs *destruction*, as from warfare, to *destroy valuations* -- particularly that of the *competitor* -- to realize new markets when there otherwise *are none*. Hence two world wars, etc.

No, that's just absurd, anti-economic garbage from you. None of that happened because of markets. Markets merely measured what was happening anyway.
I'm not *for* Stalinist bureaucratic-elitist central planning, but it *is* as validly nationalist as what any *other* country has done, government-and-investment-wise, so a big *whatever* on that.

Soviet socialism murdered millions of people, and calling it Stalinism does not alter the fact that it was socialism.
Yeaaahhhh, you're oversimplifying

Because I am trying to explain things so clearly and simply that even you cannot fail to understand them.
-- prices are *vastly* more complex than a calculator, because we're dealing with its double-duty, regarding economic information.

No, quadruple duty: expressing demand (utility) and supply (scarcity), providing an accurate incentive to producers, and providing producers with the resources needed for production.
It *begins* with the cost of producing the commodity initially,

No it doesn't. That's the falsified Labor Theory of Value that Jevons conclusively refuted 150 years ago. Marx, the Anti-Economist, never understood that Jevons had refuted it.
but then is subject to *post-production* market fluctuations, based on the balance of economic supply and demand, which has *nothing* to do with the initial cost of production.

Wrong again. Supply has everything to do with cost of production.
Nope, again you're thinking of Stalinist-type *strongman* rule, on a *nationalist* basis.

No, I am describing all Marxist-socialists, which includes you.
You can stop your demonizing *stereotyping* anytime now.

It's not a stereotype. It's a fact. And you know it.
Bullshit.

FACT.
You can't admit that wage workers are the ones producing the actual commodity that's sold for revenue and profit,

I can't admit it because it is objectively false. The workers are only supplying one factor of many. It is the owner whose decisions, initiative and labor have arranged for ALL the necessary factors of production to be applied and coordinated with the result that the product exists rather than not existing.
so you have to *bluster*, as here, when it's the workers who are the ones *at work*, doing the actual *labor* for the company.

You could with equal "logic" claim that the chickens are the ones at work doing the actual labor of producing the eggs. But we know that without the farmer, the chickens would only produce a couple dozen eggs a year. Similarly, without the entrepreneur and factory owner, we know the workers would only produce what they could produce with their own hands and their own tools -- after paying a landowner for permission, of course.
Still *not necessary*, though, now, at the communications level of *walkie-talkies*, and phone calls, and greater.

It is most definitely necessary, which is why socialism on a large scale reliably fails to produce.
Again, you're *glorifying* because today all that's needed would be a workplace-specific *wiki page*.

Identifying facts is not "glorifying" or "fetishizing." Those are just Marxist evasion words intended to erase the relevant facts from people's minds. Who on earth do you think would create such a wiki page, and how? How would it be updated to reflect changing conditions? How would you make sure every worker consulted it regularly and understood it well enough to apply the instructions? You are just spewing absurd, anti-economic nonsense.
Well, yeah, I extend the 'non-productive' terrain right into the internal corporate *staff hierarchy*, because all 'internal' tasks *are* non-productive as well -- they *don't* produce the product that the company sells.

See what absurd and cretinous "arguments" you always have to resort to? You could with equal "logic" claim that the farmer who arranges for his chickens to have plenty of food, protects them from predators, etc. doesn't actually produce any eggs. But you know that without the farmer, the chickens would produce orders of magnitude fewer eggs, just as you know that without the entrepreneur and owner, the workers would produce orders of magnitude less of the product.
Okay, get that cleared with your higher-ups, and we'll go -- I'm not a 'no-government' anarchist, exactly, but it'll at least be a 'reset' away from capitalism and its private property.

Why do you refuse to know the fact that capitalism in advanced democracies has been incomparably better for the workers than socialism, feudalism, or any other system but geoism?
Land *should* just be a raw-natural-resource *input* into the proletarian baseline, for subsequent collectivist factory-production, but unfortunately it's currently a *gargantuan* business under capitalism, by being commodified, and everyone organically needing to buy food and such.

The problem with land is not that it is allocated by the market, but who gets the money.
That's a bit of *levity* for you, huh -- ? A real stretch....

It's a plain fact.
Again, you're off-your-rocker, because capitalism is all about *artificial scarcity*, as through warfare, or the current unnecessary energy crisis, to tamp down otherwise capitalist *overproduction* and runaway buying power -- which threatens greater egalitarianism in the class divide.

No, that's just more anti-economic drivel from you. The only artificial scarcity in classical (industrial) capitalism is the artificial scarcity of land caused by its appropriation as private property. Finance capitalism adds artificial scarcity caused by IP monopolies, debt money, etc., but they are not part of the definition of capitalism. The problem of capitalism is not overproduction or runaway buying power -- i.e., abundance -- it is the relentless and increasing use of privilege to transfer buying power from the producer and consumer to the rentier (which often does have the effect of aggravating scarcity).
All you're doing is blaming the victim,

No, I'm blaming YOU for trying to deceive the victims as to how and by whom they are being victimized.
since the working class the world over has been victimized by *ruling class militaries*

What absurd nonsense. It is no "ruling class military" that robs and oppresses the working class in the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, etc. It's LANDOWNERS and other privileged interests.
-- so, to be balanced, try addressing militarist *imperialism* and warfare, and the legacy of one-sided class violence.

Class violence is perpetrated through privilege, which I address constantly. A factory owner offering workers access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have is not violence, class or any other kind.
Your anti-statist credentials are practically *nonexistent* from disuse.

The word, "statist" is meaningless, idiotic tripe.
Wages are *not* fair -- wages are *economic exploitation*.

No. Wages are only economic exploitation under capitalism because the wage worker has been forced into a disadvantageous bargaining position by the privileged, especially landowners. In a geoist economy, the workers have their rights restored, or just compensation for their abrogation, so their bargaining power is intact, and they therefore can't be exploited.

<silly Marxist drivel snipped>
Okay, I'll find the paperwork for that, and you can sign-off, to make it official.

You're really worried about *supplies*, and *power*, and such -- ? You're showing that workers have to have a full-scale *revolution*, so that all productive control is transferred-over more or less at *once*, otherwise, yes, there *would* be those incompatible logistical wrinkles popping up.

No, I'm showing that stealing from the productive is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: it will reduce production, impoverishing the workers along with everyone else.
There's no actual, material *consumption*, though,

Of course there is. You are merely, as usual, resorting to absurdity to evade the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
and that's the point -- there's no *advance planning* under capitalism,

Again, that is absurdity intended to help you evade the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
because everything economic / productive is economically *speculative*,

Again, that is absurdity intended to help you evade the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
with the piling-in into hot markets,

That's how resources are allocated efficiently to relieve scarcity.
which causes overproduction,

"Overproduction" is absurd and anti-economic Marxist tripe.
[/quote]which causes a glut of unused production afterward, with satiated markets, but not necessarily satiated *people*, if they can't afford the production at the end of the day.[/quote]
If the consumer can't afford to cover the cost of production, that indicates the product should not have been produced.
The political economy shouldn't be rewarding *speculators* and *hoarders*

It should if they make allocation more efficient.
-- workers at the actual workplaces are in the position to be much more *hands on*, *internetworked*, and *intentional* over what gets produced, and how, and for whom.

No they aren't. They don't know the first damned thing about it, and I will thank you to remember it.
'Robbed' is dramatic and sensationalist

It's a plain fact.
-- the 'producer', or equity capital investor, makes a *bet*, and is nowhere *near* the point of production itself anyway,

No, that's just idiotic and anti-economic Marxist tripe with no basis in fact. Providing producer goods to the production process is right at the point of production, and is a positive-sum contribution to production, not a zero-sum bet.
so let's just call a 'bad bet', that they were ready to lose out on anyway.

Taking a risk to enhance production is not the same as consenting to be robbed.
The unsold, unused 'surplus' from overproduction could always revert back to the control of those who *produced* it, the wage workers, so there's a political reform right there.

The wage workers only produced the product in the same sense that the chickens produced the eggs.

I don't have time to refute any more of your garbage right now, sorry.
#15232911
And here's the refutation of the rest of your ridiculous Marxist trash:
ckaihatsu wrote:The 'producers' are really just equity investors looking out for their own acquisitive interests

No, the producers are those whose decisions, initiative and labor have caused the product to exist rather than not exist: the entrepreneur who created the production system and the owner who operates it. Like the wage workers, any investors and lenders who provided purchasing power to the entrepreneur and owner to enable production only provided one factor, on agreed terms, and are thus paid the agreed dividends or interest for their contributions, just as the wage workers are paid the agreed wages for theirs.
-- their capital takes on a life / role of its *own*, and is *not* the same thing as the investor persons themselves.

By definition, the investor's or lender's contribution to production is their purchasing power, not their persons or flesh.
Don't take it so *personally*.

I always take rationalization of evil and justification of injustice personally, as evil and injustice are just as much a threat to me personally as to anyone.
If that were true then the wage workers *would* be in collective control of their own workplaces, and we'd be living in socialism right now.

No, because the wage workers are not the producers. They are not the ones whose decisions, initiative and labor caused the production system or the product to exist. They only provided one factor, wage labor, and they were paid the agreed wage for it, so they have no more claim on the product. It is the owner -- the person whose decisions, initiative and labor cause the product to exist -- who is the producer, and who rightly owns what he produces.
That would be the wage workers then.

No it would not, as proved above. The workers did not plan and arrange for all the necessary production factors to be brought together and coordinated so as to produce the product, nor could they. The owner did. You know this. You just have to refuse to know it because you have already realized that it proves your Marxist-socialist beliefs are false and evil.
No one here is 'murdering'

They most certainly are. Landowners are murdering the landless (~12M of them/yr), and socialists are murdering the productive (number unknown, but on the order of 1M/yr). The only reason landowners are murdering an order of magnitude more people than socialists at the moment is that socialists control two orders of magnitude less of the world compared to landowners, because everyone with any brains and honesty had their fill of socialism in the 20th century, thank you very much.
-- you're dramatizing politics, according to past *history*, in your own twisted way.

No, I'm identifying the relevant facts of objective physical reality.
Again, the larger picture is that the Allies *invaded* nascent proletarian revolutions, so your attempts at political-economy *character assassination* really don't go very far.

GARBAGE. No Allies invaded socialist China, and it was the socialist USSR that invaded and annexed its neighbors -- including Poland in 1939 -- and socialist China that did likewise to Korea and Tibet, and tried to do to Vietnam.
No argument on the China stuff, though China *was* invaded and victimized by Japanese imperialism.

That was well BEFORE it was socialist. Remember?
You're *digressing*, though, so here's the full background on what I'm talking about:

You "forgot" that in addition to Poland in 1939, Bessarabia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were invaded and annexed by the socialist USSR without provocation in 1940, as well as Finland, which was invaded and occupied by the socialists, but retained nominal independence under Soviet socialist rule.
*Or*, land could be treated like any *other* kind of capital

See? You REFUSE to know the difference between land and producer goods.

Why would anyone think that land, which already existed with no help from its owner or any previous owner, should be treated like factories and other producer goods, which only exist as and when they are created by the decisions, initiative and labor of their original owners?
-- aggrandized over the centuries by capitalists, by exploiting wage workers

No, that's false. Even Marx somehow found a willingness to know the fact that wage workers could not be exploited by employers until AFTER their rights to liberty had been removed and made over to landowners as their private property through enclosure of common lands. Moreover, factories and other goods cannot have been "aggrandized" by their owners, as they did and would not exist at all until and unless their original owners created them.
-- and simply *collectivized* by the world's working class, in its own, non-profit-making interests.

So you propose that just like parasitic private landowners under capitalism, the political commissars who rule over (and effectively own) your socialist workers' collectives in the interests of their own ruling class should forcibly strip everyone of their liberty rights to use the land, without just compensation, in order to enslave them.

That's what I thought.
Yeah, still not a *Stalinist*, since the last two minutes elapsed, so you're beating a dead unicorn there.

Calling Soviet socialism Stalinism doesn't change the fact that it was socialism, sorry.
Since you're actively defending capitalism to the point of its dynamic of *artificial scarcity*,

I have explicitly said the opposite. Artificial scarcity is made possible by monopoly privilege under finance capitalism, which works much like the monopolistic workers' collectives under socialism, which I consistently oppose.
you don't get to say that capitalism *alleviates* scarcity, because it *doesn't*, past the point of market saturation:

That's just baldly false, as anyone can see for themselves by comparing the rapid increase in material abundance in countries that have embraced capitalism, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, vs the chronic scarcity in countries that embraced socialism, like the USSR, Maoist China, Castro's Cuba and Chavez's Venezuela. And we know exactly why socialism can't compete with capitalism in productive abundance: when socialists steal factories, the number of factories available for production decreases, while when capitalists steal land, the amount of land available for production stays exactly the same. Only geoism, as in HK and post-socialist China, has proved itself capable of outstripping capitalism in relief of scarcity.
So which is it going to be -- are you *for* the commercial monopolization of natural-monopolies (for less market competitiveness and higher prices), or are you *against* the commercial monopolization of natural-monopolies, besides just the single case of 'land'?

I've stated that natural monopolies like transport infrastructure, water and utility networks, etc. should generally be publicly owned and operated, as there is nothing to be gained from private competition.
You *claim* to be against monopolization, but you're *for* strong currency values, or monetarism, which is a *disincentive* to equity capital investments in the commodity-production process.

There are good reasons to think that stable commodity prices encourage productive investment. A low, steady inflation of wages relative to commodity prices provides an incentive to invest in higher-productivity production systems. But it's a balancing act, as too much inflation makes investment too risky.
#15240864
Negotiator wrote:So, looking at many threads in this forum, people clearly dont understand what socialism is.

Thats puzzling, because socialism is very easy to understand.

The bible states:

Mark 12, New King James

29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.


The second law demands altruism. A society which is based on altruism is called socialism.

Atheists have come up with more worldly definitions. Like socialism is when nobody is held dependent and nobody is exploited.

Still this concept is important enough even for atheists that more secular definitions became necessary.

I dont get why any of this is hard to understand.
7

***

[size=Comic Sans MS]You have not defined socialism; so you do not help people to understand what socialism is, and people will go on not to understand what it is; and you will still be astonished.
If you are to define socialism, it is not enough to explain the end; you must also explain the means. It is more difficult; that is maybe the reason why so many people do not understand socialism.
[/size]
#15240936
Unthinking Majority wrote:There's a big difference between voluntary altruism that Jesus advocated versus "altruism" being forced upon you by government at the barrel of a gun, which isn't altruism at all. Jesus also did not advocate for altruism by force of violence through government. He said give to the needy. Giving and taking are not the same thing.

The Christian message is "be nice or burn in hell for eternity!", not my idea of completely voluntarily. I don't believe Jesus ever existed, but regardless of whether he did or not the Jesus of the Bible is not a coherent character with a coherent message. However we can say that the story creators, both oral and literary who created Jesus, did not hold governmental power and saw no prospect of gaining governmental power without supernatural intervention, this drives their message not some libertarian instinct for individual autonomy.
#15240937
I agree with Rich. The question of socialism is not a moral one. We must distinguish ethics and politics. The choice between capitalism and socialism is a political choice. In a political choice, you compare the advantages of different modes of organisation. You do not give a moral judgement.
#15240972
I've heard that the original poster owns a Bible. and he's interpreting it.


Its widely known commandments 1 through 4 are your relation to God. I am the Lord thy God , Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

And 5 through 10 deal with relation with your neighbors. Honour thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife . or his slaves, or his animals, or anything of thy neighbour.
See how that run-on sentence extends from you shall not steal on commandment 10.

There is a false narrative around "do onto others as you would have them do onto you". Look at this context...

6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Ask, Seek, Knock
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

The Narrow and Wide Gates
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

True and False Prophets
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

So the Father is truly like a Father and all men on earth are really like the Children and your relation to the Father should be fair, and to do onto the Father as should be done, with honor. I mean who now reads from a bunch of already in the wilderness magic people about this confucian principle they pick up from this?
#15241119
Rich wrote:
The Christian message is "be nice or burn in hell for eternity!", not my idea of completely voluntarily. I don't believe Jesus ever existed, but regardless of whether he did or not the Jesus of the Bible is not a coherent character with a coherent message. However we can say that the story creators, both oral and literary who created Jesus, did not hold governmental power and saw no prospect of gaining governmental power without supernatural intervention, this drives their message not some libertarian instinct for individual autonomy.



Monti wrote:
I agree with Rich. The question of socialism is not a moral one. We must distinguish ethics and politics. The choice between capitalism and socialism is a political choice. In a political choice, you compare the advantages of different modes of organisation. You do not give a moral judgement.



Agreed, though I'll note that the aim of socialism isn't really to 'hold governmental power' -- because the working class itself doesn't *require* a specialist administrative bureaucracy / state, except for during its revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie, a *workers* state.

Once humanity can produce for *itself* no state would be needed whatsoever.
#15241124
Monti wrote:I agree with Rich. The question of socialism is not a moral one. We must distinguish ethics and politics. The choice between capitalism and socialism is a political choice. In a political choice, you compare the advantages of different modes of organisation. You do not give a moral judgement.


Agree, this is a better approach.

Seems like people that are driven by "morality" are more likely to commit atrocities because they ascribe their ideology to their very identity. They begin to defend and fight at all costs (like committing atrocities, and genocides, and supporting imperialism). We see many of these type of people on pofo.

Morality is dangerous basically. :lol:
#15241145
To think one could speak of such things independently of any morality is itself. Result of the thinking of our times. I am suspect of such thinking as it is a very abstract one that strictly divorces reason from ethics/morality.

Thus, the social bases of liberalism are two-fold: the raising of property to the status of the primary social relation, and the loss of community, the loss of the capacity to appeal to or rely upon shared meaning beyond the satisfaction of individual desire.

MacIntyre uses an analysis of the use of place names in foreign countries to point out the difference between a place name for the inhabitants of an area where the name has multiple shared meanings and connotations, and the use of either same name in the context of a foreign language, or the use of a foreign name. For a foreigner, the place name is nothing but a reference pointing to a spatial location, having lost all the connotations and layers of meaning present when a native-speaker utters the name. He refers to this impoverished kind of meaning as “reference.” Nominalism is thus the characteristic epistemology of liberal society.


“the conception of pure reference, of reference as such, emerges as the artefact of a particular type of social and cultural order, one in which a minimum of shared beliefs and allegiances can be pre- supposed.” (p. 379)

This observation succinctly points to an interconnection between rationality and ethics, for by the customary use of words simply in the form of reference, all the objects referred to lose their social significance, and one creates the illusion of an “objective” world which can be talked of by means of “pure rationality”, in abstraction from the social relations which have, in fact, created and shaped the thing and given it its social significance. The sole remaining social relation mediating between people is therefore property. MacIntyre believes that English and the other international languages are now impoverished in this way.

Maintenance of the illusion of “objectivity” is essential, and MacIntyre sees the universities as playing a crucial role in the maintenance of this illusion. Since academics rely for their livelihood on disproving each other’s theories, the resulting interminable and esoteric debate continuously re-establishes the impossibility of consensus.

“In the course of history liberalism, which began as an appeal to alleged principles of shared rationality against what was felt to be the tyranny of tradition, has itself been transformed into a tradition whose continuities are partly defined by the interminability of the debate over such principles. An interminability which was from the standpoint of an earlier liberalism a grave defect to be remedied as soon as possible has become, in the eyes of some liberals at least, a kind of virtue”. (p. 335)

Far from this failure to find any firm ground undermining liberalism, MacIntyre believes that it reinforces it, because one of the fundamental bases for liberalism is the conviction that no comprehensive idea (to use Rawls’ term) can enjoy majority, let alone unanimous, support. This then justifies the ban on governments pursuing the general good.

“Any conception of the human good according to which, for example, it is the duty of government to educate the members of the community morally, ... will be proscribed. ... liberal individualism does indeed have its own broad conception of the good, which it is engaged in imposing politically, legally, socially, and culturally wherever it has the power to do so, but also that in doing so its toleration of rival conceptions of the good in the public arena is severely limited.” (p. 336)

Such a ban on governments pursuing the social good of course serves a very definite social interest.

“The weight given to an individual preference in the market is a matter of the cost which the individual is able and willing to pay; only so far as an individual has the means to bargain with those who can supply what he or she needs does the individual have an effective voice. So also in the political and social realm it is the ability to bargain that is crucial. The preferences of some are accorded weight by others only insofar as the satisfaction of those preferences will lead to the satisfaction of their own preferences. Only those who have something to give get. The disadvantaged in a liberal society are those without the means to bargain.” (p. 336)
and consequently,

“The overriding good of liberalism is no more and no less than the continued sustenance of the liberal social and political order”. (p. 345)

In each of the historical settings that MacIntyre investigates, he is able to show that the type of justice and the type of rationality which appears to the philosophical spokespeople of the community to be necessary and universal, turns out to be a description of the type of citizens of the community in question. Accordingly, the justice of liberalism and the rationality of liberalism is simply that justice and that rationality of the “citizens of nowhere” (p. 388), the “outsiders,” people lacking in any social obligation or any reason for acting other than to satisfy their desires and to defend the conditions under which they are able to continue satisfying their desires. Their rationality is therefore that of the objects of their desire.


https://sites.google.com/view/philosoph ... i11qjs7zgk
Whereas Marxists pursue class warfare to advance their goals, liberals pursue an opposite strategy of the neutralization of conflicts. They refuse to distinguish between friend and enemy, and thereby they reject the core of the process that creates political identity. Liberals by nature want to diffuse social tension and struggle, and by doing so, they try to turn politics into administrative affairs. Schmitt criticizes this tendency towards neutralization and asks them: "how can you decide not to decide?" By avoiding conflicts, they reject the other as other. Liberalism allows differences, but only within a legal framework that understands itself to be rational, hence also universal. This will render fundamental differences into degrees of similarity, thus failing to recognize the real differences between people or groups of people. Liberal parliamentarians try to decide all questions by law, but what they really do is attempting to defang and tame politics. The consequence of a liberal understanding of the state is a weakening of the state that exposes it to the dangers of political factions, such as fascists, Bolsheviks, or, in today's environment, to large corporations and lobbying groups. Schmitt argues that liberal republicanism is not really a political doctrine; it is a negation of politics, an attempt to replace real politics with law, morality, or economics. In fact, liberal parliamentarians are elitist as well, without admitting or recognizing it. They think they represent moral and legal humanism. The enemies of liberal societies, then, are easily labeled as anti-humanist, or even as terrorists whose motivation nobody can understand. The next step is to treat them as insane, anti-social, or as enemies of all of humanity.
Schmitt suggests to attack liberalism by exposing the neutralization tendency. This will allow us to see that liberalism in its core is not a philosophy of law and politics based on impartial, Enlightenment-style rationality, but rather a form of political theology, because the hope is to dissolve the sovereign nations into a system of universal legality. Schmitt's critique of modern liberal thinking is based on a nuanced reading of Hobbes and the history of sovereignty itself. In his final analysis, he detects a process in modern times that transforms politics as unavoidable power struggle into a form of politics that aims to establish a universal humanism as a secularized version of theology.
#15241172
ckaihatsu wrote:Agreed, though I'll note that the aim of socialism isn't really to 'hold governmental power' -- because the working class itself doesn't *require* a specialist administrative bureaucracy / state, except for during its revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie, a *workers* state.
Once humanity can produce for *itself* no state would be needed whatsoever.

---------
The extinction of the State is a communist item. Socialism works with the State. No classes, no money, no State: communism is an utopia. Following me, the existence of the State is not a problem when it is democratic. The State is allied with the ruling class, they say. It is neither 100% false, nor 100% right. But, in any event, it is an error to think that serviceing, aiding, protecting the ruling class represents the whole of the activity of the State and that when you remove class conflict, there remains nothing from this activity. Abolition of the State is impossible.
#15241180
Rancid wrote:Agree, this is a better approach.

Seems like people that are driven by "morality" are more likely to commit atrocities because they ascribe their ideology to their very identity. They begin to defend and fight at all costs (like committing atrocities, and genocides, and supporting imperialism). We see many of these type of people on pofo.

Morality is dangerous basically. :lol:


Every single socialist believes in such because of morality. Certainly not evidence. I used to be a communist sympathizer (true story). I wanted to save the masses from their poverty and oppression. Then I graduated and grew up and learned how the world actually worked rather than reading about it in a book.

Every ideology is based on morality, and everyone who thinks about politics has an ideology. Everyone has their own idea about how the world works, and what are the most just rules for society to function. There isn't much politics without a philosophical base of ethics that deals with good and bad, right and wrong.

The problem is if your ideology is inflexible and dogmatic in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. Enter the GOP lol. They're the neoliberal version of communists: stupid ideologues clinging to their wrong assumptions and willing to go down with the ship.
#15241182
ckaihatsu wrote:Agreed, though I'll note that the aim of socialism isn't really to 'hold governmental power' -- because the working class itself doesn't *require* a specialist administrative bureaucracy / state, except for during its revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie, a *workers* state.

Once humanity can produce for *itself* no state would be needed whatsoever.

Who will decide the rules of society with no state? Is rape and child molestation allowed, and what do we do with offenders when it occurs? Not all crimes are based on private property.

If you want local voting of citizens/workers to decide these rules and enforce them well ta-da you have a government.

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." - Alexander Hamilton
#15241189
Unthinking Majority wrote:Who will decide the rules of society with no state? Is rape and child molestation allowed, and what do we do with offenders when it occurs? Not all crimes are based on private property.

If you want local voting of citizens/workers to decide these rules and enforce them well ta-da you have a government.

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." - Alexander Hamilton


Basically yes. It's impossible to not have a state basically.

also @ckaihatsu is a flaming imperialist without a shred of credibility.
#15241194
Monti wrote:
---------
The extinction of the State is a communist item. Socialism works with the State. No classes, no money, no State:



A *workers* state, or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

It's a crucial distinction.


Monti wrote:
communism is an utopia. Following me, the existence of the State is not a problem when it is democratic.



You're implying, though, that the state can *be* democratic, when it started out being limited to white male property holders, and most recently has been subject to a presidential *coup* (and at *other* countries, too, historically).


Monti wrote:
The State is allied with the ruling class, they say. It is neither 100% false, nor 100% right.



If the state *isn't* allied with the ruling class (the bourgeoisie), then why is it that the *wealthy* don't suffer from police brutality and killer cops, and most other political inconveniences -- !


Monti wrote:
But, in any event, it is an error to think that serviceing, aiding, protecting the ruling class represents the whole of the activity of the State and that when you remove class conflict, there remains nothing from this activity.



But that's what the state *does* -- it's an organ of the *ruling class*. Again, note the lack of *imposition* on the wealthy from its government apparatus.


Monti wrote:
Abolition of the State is impossible.



Explain.
#15241195
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Every single socialist believes in such because of morality. Certainly not evidence. I used to be a communist sympathizer (true story). I wanted to save the masses from their poverty and oppression. Then I graduated and grew up and learned how the world actually worked rather than reading about it in a book.

Every ideology is based on morality, and everyone who thinks about politics has an ideology. Everyone has their own idea about how the world works, and what are the most just rules for society to function. There isn't much politics without a philosophical base of ethics that deals with good and bad, right and wrong.

The problem is if your ideology is inflexible and dogmatic in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. Enter the GOP lol. They're the neoliberal version of communists: stupid ideologues clinging to their wrong assumptions and willing to go down with the ship.



*Or*, one's interest could be about society's *mode of production*, meaning its political economy and how it produces / not-produces stuff for everyone.


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show
Image



[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show
Image
#15241196
ckaihatsu wrote:
Agreed, though I'll note that the aim of socialism isn't really to 'hold governmental power' -- because the working class itself doesn't *require* a specialist administrative bureaucracy / state, except for during its revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie, a *workers* state.

Once humanity can produce for *itself* no state would be needed whatsoever.



Unthinking Majority wrote:
Who will decide the rules of society with no state?



That would be the particular people / workers of that particular society.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
Is rape and child molestation allowed, and what do we do with offenders when it occurs? Not all crimes are based on private property.



If *that's* your only concern, I'd say go ahead and *exhale* -- such anti-social egotistical behaviors would *not* have any substrate in a post-capitalist / post-alienation society. Everyone would be fully *socialized* from birth, and no one would be alienated from their proportionate active, co-determining role in society as a whole. Social participation and co-determination would *not* have capital ownership as a prerequisite, like *now*, under capitalism.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
If you want local voting of citizens/workers to decide these rules and enforce them well ta-da you have a government.



No contention.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." - Alexander Hamilton



---


Rancid wrote:
also @ckaihatsu is a flaming imperialist without a shred of credibility.



GFYVM.
#15241197
ckaihatsu wrote:If *that's* your only concern, I'd say go ahead and *exhale* -- such anti-social egotistical behaviors would *not* have any substrate in a post-capitalist / post-alienation society. Everyone would be fully *socialized* from birth, and no one would be alienated from their proportionate active, co-determining role in society as a whole. Social participation and co-determination would *not* have capital ownership as a prerequisite, like *now*, under capitalism.


Well that's not my only concern. But capitalism isn't what makes some men horny abusive assholes. Rape existed before capitalism and will exist after. Every society needs rules to prevent chaos.
#15241200
Rancid wrote:Basically yes. It's impossible to not have a state basically.

also @ckaihatsu is a flaming imperialist without a shred of credibility.

Right. Imagine what would happen if everyone in the world suddenly agrees to get rid of all governments and live in a system of anarchy. Different factions would quickly form to protect themselves from each other and each would institute their own rules and such. That's exactly what the international system of states is. The people who didn't form factions would just get their butts invaded and forced to become part of that faction.
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