[Kasu]

Well, I came here, and I'm just ecstatic that everything I have been thinking of for the last couple of months has already been thought of. I watched videos of possible alien civilizations, read up on communism and socialism, etc.

I thought to myself, "why are people always afraid of automation in factories?"

Well of course, it's because when you have capitalists investing in profit, they end up replacing workers with robots, get wealthier, and the now unemployed workers are back in the slums.

When you get right down to it. the only thing that's preventing technology from advancing like it should be, is capitalism. The capitalist class has their investments in production. But if they all replace their workers with robots, they have no more consumers. You have the robots producing faster and more efficiently than ever, but no one to buy the products. That is exactly what Marx saw, in the 1800s. Overproduction is the essential flaw in capitalism, and because of it, capitalism will eventually progress into barbarism.

I guess, that I've always been a technocrat, I just never knew that these ideas were actually... real.


But. I think that as long as private property exists, technocracy will never be achieved. The capitalist class will never agree to fully automating everything, because if the price system is abolished, suddenly, they too will lose their power. Everyone will have the same standard of living. Class divisions will disappear. The capitalist class definitely doesn't want that.

Technocracy will make true communism very possible. It will essentially be communism, in my opinion. With the price system abolished, the state abolished, and class divisions abolished, it really can't get any closer to communism. Free access to everything, drastically reduced labour hours, etc. Communal managing, and society as a whole seeing to that it's own problems are addressed and dealt with, not a central government, and not private investors.

And the only way to achieve that, is through revolution. The main problem, capitalism, has to be dealt with before a true technocracy can be achieved. Even though, I just learned what technocracy was, not more than 30 minutes ago.


What do you think?

[Dr House]

You're completely ignoring skilled workers, which robots will never replace, and the service sector.

-Dr House

[Kasu]

As consumers, or laborers?

[Dr House]

Both. If automation actually meant a reduction in employment rates, we would see double-digit unemployment in America. We haven't since the end of WWII, and other than during recessions, it's done nothing but decline.

Robots will never fully replace workers. For every machine that causes a layoff, at least one job that can't be done by one pops up. All machines do is make production easier and more abundant, and thus consumer products cheaper and absolutely everyone wealthier.

-Dr House

[FallenRaptor]

You're completely ignoring skilled workers, which robots will never replace, and the service sector.

The service sector can also get automatized. Telephone operators, for example.

I agree that automation can't get rid of all human jobs, but it can certainly get rid of a large amount of them. Potentially enough to someday leave the majority of the population unemployed and make the whole system to collapse.

But. I think that as long as private property exists, technocracy will never be achieved. The capitalist class will never agree to fully automating everything, because if the price system is abolished, suddenly, they too will lose their power.

I disagree. Technology will continue to advance no matter what, since it's in the best interest of the individual capitalist(but disastrous for the capitalist class as a whole). The only problem I see is that governments may try to limit technological advancement, but I think that'll lead to a lot of conflict among different governments.

[Dr House]

I agree that automation can't get rid of all human jobs, but it can certainly get rid of a large amount of them. Potentially enough to someday leave the majority of the population unemployed and make the whole system to collapse.

We've had machines replacing humans for decades now. The employment rate in the US is still 71%.

You fail.

-Dr House

[FallenRaptor]

I think it's still too early to tell for sure. Most automated machines are probably still more expensive than human labor and the service sector has been able to take up the jobs lost. We'll just have to wait and see what unfolds in the future.

[Dr House]

Well, I've always advocated temporary unemployment insurance. If it eventually turns out you're right I might just revise my stance on the welfare state.

-Dr House

[FallenRaptor]

I'd prefer the welfare without the state.

[Kasu]

Both. If automation actually meant a reduction in employment rates, we would see double-digit unemployment in America.

But that's the thing. In a technocracy, the price system is abolished. Unemployment would mean nothing, as everything produced by machines would be free. Perhaps a token economy might exist, but it would be quite useless.




Complete automation would only benefit the individual capitalist for so long. In the beginning, he'll make almost 100% of the revenue, and his wealth would soar.

However, as unemployment begins to rise, less and less people can afford to buy the products. You'd have a huge overproduction of supplies, and hardly anyone to buy them. The prices would begin to fall, until the entire system collapses, and we plunge into barbarism. (applying Marx's prediction on capitalism with something I read from a technocracy article)

That's why a revolution is needed in order to prevent capitalism from ending civilized society..

[tornadouk]

Overproduction is not a flaw in capitalism, overproduction is yet to have existed. For overproduction to exist, every possible human desire must have already been satisfied. I don't see this happening ever, let alone in the far future.

But you believe that machines will be able to satisfy every possible human want/desire in the future? You think that we will reach a point where humans are completely satisfied, and don't desire anything else? Machines do replace workers, but by doing so they make workers available to do other jobs and satisfy other desires. For example if agricultural machinery gets better, then workers will be freed up to create computers etc. Even if machines were suddenly able to produce everything we produce today by themselves with out the help of workers, then people would still find new jobs producing things to satisfy other human wants which aren't currently satisfied.

[FallenRaptor]

Overproduction is not a flaw in capitalism, overproduction is yet to have existed.

False. m4nu explained how overproduction was involved the great depression here.

For overproduction to exist, every possible human desire must have already been satisfied

Again, false.

But you believe that machines will be able to satisfy every possible human want/desire in the future?

Do you think that people in a future communist/technocratic society would have the same wants as the people in our current capitalist society? I'll quote Lenin again(this was being discussed in the communism forum):

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

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

[Dr House]

Complete automation would only benefit the individual capitalist for so long. In the beginning, he'll make almost 100% of the revenue, and his wealth would soar.

You fail. Machines have running costs, first of all, so it's not like the capitalist suddenly keeps all the revenues. And second, it is empirically proven that when costs are reduced, prices fall right along with them due to competition.

The prices would begin to fall, until the entire system collapses

Wrong, the prices would begin to fall until they reach equilibrium. Overproduction is brought on by a reduction in demand, which has never happened and simply cannot happen globally.

m4nu explained how overproduction was involved the great depression here.

And I shot him down. The Depression was not caused by overproduction, which cannot happen as a global phenomenon. It was caused by overextension of credit.

[tornadouk]

FallenRaptor: What you refer to as overproduction FallenRaptor is malinvestment.

[FallenRaptor]

I believe we call that "overaccumulation".

The question of determining whether according to Marx, a crisis of overproduction is first of all a crisis of overproduction of commodities or a crisis of overproduction of capital is really meaningless in the framework of Marx’s economic analysis. The mass of commodities is but one specific form of capital, commodity capital. Under capitalism, which is generalised commodity production, no overproduction is possible which is not simultaneously overproduction of commodities and overproduction of capital (overaccumulation).

---

It is correct that in the last analysis, capitalist crises of overproduction result from a downslide of the average rate of profit. But this does not represent a variant of the ‘monocausal’ explanation of crises. It means that, under capitalism, the fluctuations of the average rate of profit are in a sense the seismograph of what happens in the system as a whole. So that formula just refers back to the sum-total of partially independent variables, whose interplay causes the fluctuations of the average rate of profit.

Capitalist growth is always disproportionate growth, i.e. growth with increasing disequilibrium, both between different departments of output (Marx basically distinguishes department I, producing means of production, and department II, producing means of consumption; other authors add a department III producing non-reproductive goods – luxury goods and arms – to that list), between different branches and between production and final consumption. In fact, ‘equilibrium’ under capitalism is but a conceptual hypothesis practically never attained in real life, except as a border case. The above mentioned tendency of ‘overshooting’ is only an illustration of that more general phenomenon. So ‘average’ capital accumulation leads to an over-accumulation which leads to the crisis and to a prolonged phenomenon of ‘underinvestment’ during the depression. Output is then consistently inferior to current demand, which spurs on capital accumulation, all the more so as each successive phase of economic revival starts with new machinery of a higher technological level (leading to a higher average productivity of labour), and to a bigger and bigger mountain of produced commodities. Indeed, the very duration of the business cycle (in average 7.5 years for the last 160 years) seemed for Marx determined by the ‘moral’ life-time of fixed capital, i.e. the duration of the reproduction cycle (in value terms, not in possible physical survival) of machinery.

http://www.ernestmandel.org/en/works/tx ... marx/9.htm

And I shot him down. The Depression was not caused by overproduction, which cannot happen as a global phenomenon. It was caused by overextension of credit.

That is also address by Ernest Mandel:

Marx visualised the business cycle as intimately intertwined with a credit cycle, which can acquire a relative autonomy in relation to what occurs in production properly speaking. An (over) expansion of credit can enable the capitalist system to sell temporarily more goods that the sum of real incomes created in current production plus past savings could buy. Likewise, credit (over) expansion can enable them to invest temporarily more capital than really accumulated surplus-value (plus depreciation allowances and recovered value of raw materials) would have enabled them to invest (the first part of the formula refers to net investments; the second to gross investment).

But all this is only true temporarily. In the longer run, debts must be paid; and they are not automatically paid through the results of expanded output and income made possible by credit expansion. Hence the risk of a Krach, of a credit or banking crisis, adding fuel to the mass of explosives which cause the crisis of overproduction.