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#15134862
ckaihatsu wrote:
No conspiracy theories, and you're thinking of a past election -- I'm talking about 2018:



wat0n wrote:
One where opposition politicians weren't allowed to run freely.



'Run' -- as if it was an *election*. It *wasn't*. It was a U.S.-backed *coup*, after Maduro had already been elected.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, the U.S. supported *that* coup as well:



wat0n wrote:
Sort of, their attitude was more complex than that. We know so because their comms are public now.



So, politically, do you support counter-democratic U.S.-backed *coups*?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Pinochet wasn't a revolutionary -- he was the *opposite*, and there's now been a recent movement in Chile to overthrow the vestiges of his past dictatorship:


Chile Celebrates Voters' Decision To Scrap Constitution, Start Over

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/92785927 ... start-over



wat0n wrote:
A counter-revolution is simply another revolution, but contraposed: It is a revolution carried out by those who opposed the initial one, but who also came to realization the system did not work.



You're ignoring the actual *politics*, of either / both -- politics isn't about being *apolitical*, and balancing on a see-saw, as you're attempting to do, it's about whether you think *elitism* is acceptable, or not. *Less* elitism equals more democratic control, and then workers control, while *more* elitism means cabal-like control over how society runs.


wat0n wrote:
He didn't go back to the old system since it had proven, well, ineffective, and the military had developed an anti-democratic ideology.



So you're at least purportedly *pro-democratic* -- do you think all ballots should be counted in the current U.S. election, or not?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Corporate / business 'independence' is a *misnomer*, because the private sector got bailed-out by Trump in early 2020, and they received a *windfall* from public funding early in Trump's term:

So you can't claim that private sector businesses and the wealthy are 'independent' when they've been receiving welfare-like benefits from the U.S. government.



wat0n wrote:
So what? Workers also got bailed out this year and also got tax breaks.



Okay, so then you don't get to use the term 'free markets' whatsoever because as things are you're a *statist*, and corporations and the wealthy get *government welfare*. (Hello, zombie companies!)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If far-left / Marxist ideological political movements have been as *self-determining* as you're implying then what threw their political ascendancies off-course? Certainly it wasn't self-sabotage, because you're making them sound *all-powerful* and somehow *invulnerable* to external social factors, like political opposition. So why aren't we living under socialism *now*, going by your reasoning?



wat0n wrote:
I'm not sure about what your point is. If you are conceding they deviate from their stated goals because of how actual reality is, then you are conceding there is something wrong in their diagnosis of it.



I'm not conceding *shit* -- you're continuing to blame-the-victim, and you're not even analyzing actual *historical events*, which show the *mitigation* of revolutionary stated goals, by *external* (imperialist) factors.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So to recap, will capitalism bring about full automation over industrial production, or won't it?



wat0n wrote:
Again, that depends on technological development. Assuming it is technically possible, yes, it will.

But I'm skeptical about it being "technically possible" to literally automate all economic activity. I think some services will remain done by humans.



Would you describe your politics as being 'technocratic'? It's the status-quo *now*, and is accelerating in concentration (technological elitism), according to the increasing use of automation, over industrial production.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
An analogy would be to ask why *anyone* pays for the costs of *transportation* when it doesn't directly add to anyone's wages, or benefits, or revenue, or profits.

It's one of those things that's simply an overhead *cost* -- and so all non-productive work roles (which don't produce commodities that can be sold for revenue, and profits, in the M-C-M' cycle) are just like that, the 'costs of doing business', as the phrase goes.

Do you finally understand this -- we've been over it several times now and it's not that difficult a concept to understand. Got it now? Here's a 'cheat sheet':


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

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Of course I understand it :roll:

Do you understand, then, that the worker working in transportation is also participating in the revenue generating process? And therefore, you need to impute its contribution to it to make any judgment about whether they are being paid "fairly" or not.



A transportation worker is providing a *service* commodity, and their wages are ultimately determined by the balance of *class* forces, in class warfare -- the *less* class-conscious struggle going on among such workers, the *lower* their wages will be because the bosses / government employer will just get away with paying them less. Of course the transportation worker's work generates revenue, because they're producing a *commodity*, that customers *pay* for, that of geography-spanning transit.

To the *consumer* of transportation, transportation is just an overcost *cost* -- people commute in order to get to the *productive* work that they may or may not do.

As usual you're getting mixed-up, by digressing -- the *janitor* provides a service, but it's sheerly a *drain* on revenue, the same as all executives, because it's strictly an *internal overhead cost* to the business entity itself, without producing any commodities that can be sold for revenue (the M-C-M' cycle).


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Not all who have some surplus cash on-hand, in a hole in the ground, or inside a mattress, are necessarily executing some intentional 'financial plan', as you're making it out to be. Again, if someone happens to simply not-spend some cash then they have a *surplus*, but that doesn't automatically make them a *capitalist*, which was your original erroneous contention.

Please avoid making assumptions.



wat0n wrote:
They are doing the same type of calculation a capitalist does - they simply want to maximize what they perceive their expected risk-adjusted return.



No, not everyone is as financially meticulous as you are -- some people just have cash lying around without having *planned* it that way.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
In the past I myself thought that these two terms conferred some kind of semantic distinction, but I asked about it, and it turns out that the two terms are actually *synonymous*. I'd be open to hearing your understanding, though.



wat0n wrote:
I recall reading it from people who like Marx, actually.

Marxist refers to the political program and general ideology associated with Marx's work. In other words, it's a normative analysis.

Marxian refers to the paradigm and tools used by Marx and his followers to analyze and explain reality. In other words, it's a positive analysis.

It is possible to Marxian without being Marxist - some early social democrats could arguably be an example.



Okay, that's fair, and that's the initial impression / understanding I had.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Good question. The first two Western countries to industrialize benefitted from prior colonialist *mercantilism* abroad, and were well-situated to reconfigure their societies to *industrial* mass production:



wat0n wrote:
Right, that's one way. American industrialization doesn't follow any of the preceding patterns so far either.



My understanding is that the U.S. was able to *improve* on certain industrial implementations, like the tightness of the turns in their railroad tracks, which conferred a logistical improvement / advantage at the time.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yup:



wat0n wrote:
...Which is why Marx would have trouble explaining the Russian Revolution. He may even find it an aberration (in terms of his theory), since they skipped industrial capitalism and industrialized through a (allegedly?) Marxist system.



Was Marx really a stagist, as you're contending here? Do you have any references to corroborate this contention of yours?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You tell me -- you're a capitalist / status-quo supporter. I'd be interested to know how likely you think full automation of industrial mass production is under current conditions of capitalism.



wat0n wrote:
It depends on whether the technology to allow for it is developed. This is primarily a scientific question, not an economic one.

If it does, then I think it's very likely. If it's cheaper to industrialize there is the incentive to do so, isn't it?



I'm talking about *full automation*, not past-centuries *industrialization*.

Oftentimes it's *cheaper* to just hire cheap labor than to fully *automate*, so capitalism / the market mechanism favors low-wage labor, which is a *disincentive* to industrialize and automate. That's why the issue is still a *question*, theoretically, instead of being a *given*, as *you* assume.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Correct -- political ideologies are *relative* to one-another, on a left-right political *continuum*, as I have in this political-spectrum diagram:


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Indeed, and shows the inadequacy for a one dimensional spectrum.



ckaihatsu wrote:
How so?



wat0n wrote:
Is Bolshevism the same as Stalinism? As 21st century progresism? As left-wing anarchism/anarcho-communism? As radical feminism? As chavism?



These ideologies are all shown on my one-dimensional left-right political spectrum, above -- see 'Trotskyism' for Bolshevism, and 'identity politics' for radical feminism. 'Chavism' would be 'left-nationalism'.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yup again -- you're basically making my theoretical argument *for* me here. I'm saying that disparate workers co-ops is a non-starter, since they first need the capital necessary to buy-out *current* ownership, and then, as owners, they would no longer have the same *political* interests, for proletarian revolution (anti-exploitation, anti-oppression), that they have as dispossessed *workers* (only).



wat0n wrote:
But that is not something they are legally forbidden to do. If they don't, it's because they face a coordination problem (an example of a transaction cost, mind you).



You have to understand what *material* interests are -- it's not necessary strictly a *legal* thing. Once someone has capital invested, to make gains, their material interests are with that *capital*, since they can improve their lifestyle based on that source of material income.

Workers, on the other hand, only have *themselves*, collectively, against the opposite interests of the bosses and bourgeois government. They do not benefit from capital because they don't have it, as capitalists do.

Yes, workers solidarity is not automatic -- there's the countervailing social force of 'false consciousness', unfortunately.


---


wat0n wrote:
I'm aware of it. So, was the bourgeoisie usurped in the USSR?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Russia in 1917 was uniquely politically advanced, especially compared to China, because it overthrew its monarchy and then went straight to workers soviets and the Bolshevik Revolution on their behalf -- it *skipped* the bourgeois-revolution developmental / industrialization 'stage', and asserted that its proletariat could do this (Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution'), but it depended on *spreading* the proletarian revolution *internationally*, particularly to Germany and the rest of Europe, which didn't happen, obviously. This was *prior* to Stalin and the Stalinism that you refer to.



wat0n wrote:
Yup, a refutation of one of Marx's key predictions... But you did not answer my question.



'Predictions' isn't the appropriate term to use here -- you're thinking of *clinical science*. Revolutionary activity is about overthrowing existing *class hegemony* -- it's a social *development*, rather than a relatively passive *observation*, or prediction.

I *did* address your question -- the workers took control of factory production after the overthrow of the tsar, so there was no conventional 'stage' of bourgeois development in Russia, in the early 20th century, before Stalin and Stalinism (USSR).


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, no, you're *not* -- you've never mentioned 'the cost of profit', nor are you now, nor have 'free market' types ever mentioned it, either.

I've noted -- probably on another thread -- that the 'entrepreneurial' / ownership role could simply be a regular salaried white-collar position, along with all others in the corporate bureaucracy so that it wouldn't be so inflated in compensation from receiving workers' surplus labor value. Workers could then *receive* the surplus labor value that's currently being *expropriated* from them.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
You are forgetting here the role of risk taking. A white collar worker is taking less risks than a business owner - and while he may have a lower income as a result, .



Since capital is professionally managed anyway, it could just be corporate-*entity* capital entirely, with all managers / executive employees receiving a salary so that present-day private / individual *ownership* wouldn't have to be rewarded with surplus labor value -- the surplus labor value could go to the workers who are making the commodities (goods and/or services) for the company, instead of being expropriated for the sake of private / individual ownership interests.

What you call '[financial] risk' is *anachronistic* because virtually all sizeable capital is *professionally managed* today, so it's just an executive / managerial function, anyway, and is also subject to financial-industry *culture*, or coordination, internally, as with cartels and price-fixing.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You obviously haven't taken a look at my 'labor credits' proposal, for a communist-type *gift economy* -- the only 'cost', post-capitalism, would be for a sorting function on a regular desktop computer.



wat0n wrote:
You are seriously underestimating the role of transaction costs here. If they were so low, there would (for instance) be a lot more worker co-ops around :)



You're conflating financial 'transaction costs', with collective-worker *coordination*, as on a *solidarity* basis. Money ('economics') is not the same thing as socio-political organizing ('politics'), for proletarian common interests.

My post-capitalist model shows that the market mechanism is *not objectively needed* for getting information about (organic) mass demand -- such could be done from mass-aggregated individuals' *shopping lists*, essentially, and provided in generalized data, from such mass aggregations, per rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.), per day, to the public.

The *point* of workers-of-the-world socialism is to *eliminate* the market mechanism, and all exchange values and exchanges, in favor of worker-controlled production, and full-automation, to produce directly to the consumer.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're showing your bad habit of *assuming* again -- all of these superstructural details that you're outlining are ultimately *arbitrary*, and certainly not 'givens'.

Black markets can only exist due to *legal* decrees, from government -- there are no black markets for *popcorn* or *whiskey*, because such goods are not decreed to be illegal, according to prevailing legal norms. So, no, they don't simply 'pop out' on their own -- the government tacitly creates and supports the barbaric illicit markets through its legal paradigm of choice.

The *major* difference that *can* be implemented on a reformist basis is how users and abusers are *treated* by government -- will they continue to be considered as 'criminals', or will they be considered to be 'clients', and tended to with government *social services* instead of by heavy-handed and even murderous *police* -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Of course they are "black" markets because they are made illegal by the Government. That's the point: People are willingly participating in them regardless of whatever the Government wants.



Okay, you're acknowledging that you're more of a *statist* than a 'free market' type, because you're *okay* with the government's 'War on Drugs', that legally creates the barbaric drug-trade illicit market.

The *alternative*, as I've already mentioned, is for the *government* to be the single-payer *dispensary* for all things pharmaceutical- / drug-related, including all necessary health care and clinical services for use and abuse.

Since you're already a statist why not go *full government* and cut out the private-sector middleman *altogether*? People wouldn't have to pay for the add-on cost of private profits anymore, this way.
#15134872
ckaihatsu wrote:'Run' -- as if it was an *election*. It *wasn't*. It was a U.S.-backed *coup*, after Maduro had already been elected.


What coup are you talking about exactly? Maduro's plenipotentiary assembly did not allow the opposition to freely run, so that election is hardly legitimate.

ckaihatsu wrote:So, politically, do you support counter-democratic U.S.-backed *coups*?


No, no one wants or likes coups. For instance, no one likes auto-coups like the one Maduro pulled out in 2017 by illegally setting up a politburo, just like no one likes the sort of anti-democratic regimes you support.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're ignoring the actual *politics*, of either / both -- politics isn't about being *apolitical*, and balancing on a see-saw, as you're attempting to do, it's about whether you think *elitism* is acceptable, or not. *Less* elitism equals more democratic control, and then workers control, while *more* elitism means cabal-like control over how society runs.


Wrong. Politics is simply the process of managing power. Ideally, this should be done non-violently through negotiations but this is not always possible.

ckaihatsu wrote:So you're at least purportedly *pro-democratic* -- do you think all ballots should be counted in the current U.S. election, or not?


Yes. Do you? Because so far I've seen you advocating for the gulagization of political opponents, supporting the Venezuelan and Soviet dictatorships and the like.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, so then you don't get to use the term 'free markets' whatsoever because as things are you're a *statist*, and corporations and the wealthy get *government welfare*. (Hello, zombie companies!)


No, I'm no free market zealot if that's what you think. Fortunately I can tell the difference between counter-cyclical and structural policies.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'm not conceding *shit* -- you're continuing to blame-the-victim, and you're not even analyzing actual *historical events*, which show the *mitigation* of revolutionary stated goals, by *external* (imperialist) factors.


Victim? Were the Bolsheviks victims when they carried out genocide against the Ukrainian population?

ckaihatsu wrote:Would you describe your politics as being 'technocratic'? It's the status-quo *now*, and is accelerating in concentration (technological elitism), according to the increasing use of automation, over industrial production.


To some extent, yes. Certainly technology is a key determinant of what can be materially feasible, don't you think?

ckaihatsu wrote:A transportation worker is providing a *service* commodity, and their wages are ultimately determined by the balance of *class* forces, in class warfare -- the *less* class-conscious struggle going on among such workers, the *lower* their wages will be because the bosses / government employer will just get away with paying them less. Of course the transportation worker's work generates revenue, because they're producing a *commodity*, that customers *pay* for, that of geography-spanning transit.

To the *consumer* of transportation, transportation is just an overcost *cost* -- people commute in order to get to the *productive* work that they may or may not do.

As usual you're getting mixed-up, by digressing -- the *janitor* provides a service, but it's sheerly a *drain* on revenue, the same as all executives, because it's strictly an *internal overhead cost* to the business entity itself, without producing any commodities that can be sold for revenue (the M-C-M' cycle).


I'm referring to transportation done or paid for by the business. It is no different from janitors in this regard, if their work is necessary to generate revenue, then they are contributing to it indirectly and this contribution needs to be recognized to make judgments. This is also a way of how your example about exploitation above is flawed.

ckaihatsu wrote:No, not everyone is as financially meticulous as you are -- some people just have cash lying around without having *planned* it that way.


Sure, I also have some of it too - around $8. But we are talking about relevant amounts of money - just how many people have something like $10k or $100k lying around (save for those dealing with illicit activities)?

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, that's fair, and that's the initial impression / understanding I had.


Yup, I think the distinction is more common in academia. One of the problems with Marxism however is that the Marxian paradigm is also flawed as we've come to learn over time.

It's why the Revolution was actually successful (somewhat) in what was at best a late feudal or early industrial society rather than the already industrialized societies like those in Western Europe. According to Marx, this was not supposed to happen.

ckaihatsu wrote:My understanding is that the U.S. was able to *improve* on certain industrial implementations, like the tightness of the turns in their railroad tracks, which conferred a logistical improvement / advantage at the time.


Correct, but it didn't quite rely on colonialism. It also had other major advantages, e.g. its geography.

ckaihatsu wrote:Was Marx really a stagist, as you're contending here? Do you have any references to corroborate this contention of yours?


Wasn't his theory of history essentially stagist?

ckaihatsu wrote:I'm talking about *full automation*, not past-centuries *industrialization*.

Oftentimes it's *cheaper* to just hire cheap labor than to fully *automate*, so capitalism / the market mechanism favors low-wage labor, which is a *disincentive* to industrialize and automate. That's why the issue is still a *question*, theoretically, instead of being a *given*, as *you* assume.


Right, but labor is cheaper for some tasks only - which is why there is an ongoing process of automation. It's also why I'm saying it depends on technological development, mainly.

ckaihatsu wrote:These ideologies are all shown on my one-dimensional left-right political spectrum, above -- see 'Trotskyism' for Bolshevism, and 'identity politics' for radical feminism. 'Chavism' would be 'left-nationalism'.


Would you explain your reasoning behind your sorting from left to right?

ckaihatsu wrote:You have to understand what *material* interests are -- it's not necessary strictly a *legal* thing. Once someone has capital invested, to make gains, their material interests are with that *capital*, since they can improve their lifestyle based on that source of material income.

Workers, on the other hand, only have *themselves*, collectively, against the opposite interests of the bosses and bourgeois government. They do not benefit from capital because they don't have it, as capitalists do.

Yes, workers solidarity is not automatic -- there's the countervailing social force of 'false consciousness', unfortunately.


When workers save part of their income, they are actually owning some amount of capital. What stops many of them to start a co-op with their savings?

ckaihatsu wrote:'Predictions' isn't the appropriate term to use here -- you're thinking of *clinical science*. Revolutionary activity is about overthrowing existing *class hegemony* -- it's a social *development*, rather than a relatively passive *observation*, or prediction.


Marxism purports to be "scientific socialism", based on the Marxian paradigm. Of course contrasting their claims with what actually happens in this regard.

ckaihatsu wrote:I *did* address your question -- the workers took control of factory production after the overthrow of the tsar, so there was no conventional 'stage' of bourgeois development in Russia, in the early 20th century, before Stalin and Stalinism (USSR).


Was there a bourgeoisie during Stalinism?

ckaihatsu wrote:Since capital is professionally managed anyway, it could just be corporate-*entity* capital entirely, with all managers / executive employees receiving a salary so that present-day private / individual *ownership* wouldn't have to be rewarded with surplus labor value -- the surplus labor value could go to the workers who are making the commodities (goods and/or services) for the company, instead of being expropriated for the sake of private / individual ownership interests.

What you call '[financial] risk' is *anachronistic* because virtually all sizeable capital is *professionally managed* today, so it's just an executive / managerial function, anyway, and is also subject to financial-industry *culture*, or coordination, internally, as with cartels and price-fixing.


Just because capital is being professionally managed, it doesn't mean capitalists are not taking risks.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're conflating financial 'transaction costs', with collective-worker *coordination*, as on a *solidarity* basis. Money ('economics') is not the same thing as socio-political organizing ('politics'), for proletarian common interests.

My post-capitalist model shows that the market mechanism is *not objectively needed* for getting information about (organic) mass demand -- such could be done from mass-aggregated individuals' *shopping lists*, essentially, and provided in generalized data, from such mass aggregations, per rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.), per day, to the public.

The *point* of workers-of-the-world socialism is to *eliminate* the market mechanism, and all exchange values and exchanges, in favor of worker-controlled production, and full-automation, to produce directly to the consumer.


I'm not referring to financial transaction costs exclusively. For instance, the process of coordinating, bargaining, etc is also costly (sometimes way too costly).

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, you're acknowledging that you're more of a *statist* than a 'free market' type, because you're *okay* with the government's 'War on Drugs', that legally creates the barbaric drug-trade illicit market.

The *alternative*, as I've already mentioned, is for the *government* to be the single-payer *dispensary* for all things pharmaceutical- / drug-related, including all necessary health care and clinical services for use and abuse.

Since you're already a statist why not go *full government* and cut out the private-sector middleman *altogether*? People wouldn't have to pay for the add-on cost of private profits anymore, this way.


Not really. I think they should be legalized, taxed and regulated, at least based on the effects of illegalization.
#15134938
ckaihatsu wrote:
'Run' -- as if it was an *election*. It *wasn't*. It was a U.S.-backed *coup*, after Maduro had already been elected.



wat0n wrote:
What coup are you talking about exactly? Maduro's plenipotentiary assembly did not allow the opposition to freely run, so that election is hardly legitimate.




A crisis concerning the identity of the legitimate president of Venezuela has been underway since 10 January 2019, with the nation and the world divided in support for Nicolás Maduro or Juan Guaidó. The process and results of the 20 May 2018 presidential election were widely disputed.[1][2] The opposition-majority National Assembly declared Maduro a "usurper" of the presidency on the day of his second inauguration and disclosed a plan to set forth its president Guaidó as the succeeding acting president of the country under article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution.[2][5] A week later,



the Supreme Tribunal of Justice declared that the presidency of the National Assembly was the "usurper" of authority and declared the body to be unconstitutional.[2]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela ... ial_crisis



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So, politically, do you support counter-democratic U.S.-backed *coups*?



wat0n wrote:
No, no one wants or likes coups. For instance, no one likes auto-coups like the one Maduro pulled out in 2017 by illegally setting up a politburo, just like no one likes the sort of anti-democratic regimes you support.



Well, if *Bush* could be installed into the U.S. presidency by the Supreme Court, then I guess that serves as *precedent*, and the U.S. should not be objecting -- much less fomenting coups -- in places like Venezuela.


---


wat0n wrote:
A counter-revolution is simply another revolution, but contraposed: It is a revolution carried out by those who opposed the initial one, but who also came to realization the system did not work.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're ignoring the actual *politics*, of either / both -- politics isn't about being *apolitical*, and balancing on a see-saw, as you're attempting to do, it's about whether you think *elitism* is acceptable, or not. *Less* elitism equals more democratic control, and then workers control, while *more* elitism means cabal-like control over how society runs.



wat0n wrote:
Wrong. Politics is simply the process of managing power. Ideally, this should be done non-violently through negotiations but this is not always possible.



'Negotiations' with *who*, exactly? Workers have no *interests* in negotiating with those who rob them of their wages each and every day ('surplus labor value'). By ignoring *class interests* you're ignoring the real *politics* of the world situation at the broadest scale of society.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're at least purportedly *pro-democratic* -- do you think all ballots should be counted in the current U.S. election, or not?



wat0n wrote:
Yes. Do you? Because so far I've seen you advocating for the gulagization of political opponents, supporting the Venezuelan and Soviet dictatorships and the like.



Well, 'dictatorship' there is a misnomer, and I don't advocate for Stalinism, anyway, ideologically, because it *disempowers* the workers like any *other* nation-state. Sure, I'll *defend* left-nationalist governments in Latin America, etc., against Western imperialist predations, but I don't *tout* nationalism of any kind as any desired goal for the working class.

'Gulagization' would just be a revolutionary *tactic*, if needed. Note that it wouldn't be *Stalinist*, though, as you and Sivad imply -- it would have to be on the basis of working class power and organization.


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so then you don't get to use the term 'free markets' whatsoever because as things are you're a *statist*, and corporations and the wealthy get *government welfare*. (Hello, zombie companies!)



wat0n wrote:
No, I'm no free market zealot if that's what you think. Fortunately I can tell the difference between counter-cyclical and structural policies.



You should *elaborate* on where you stand and what your politics *are*, because you tend to be *evasive* about such. Do you have any kind of overall / ideological political *statement* to put forth?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm not conceding *shit* -- you're continuing to blame-the-victim, and you're not even analyzing actual *historical events*, which show the *mitigation* of revolutionary stated goals, by *external* (imperialist) factors.



wat0n wrote:
Victim? Were the Bolsheviks victims when they carried out genocide against the Ukrainian population?



Oh, you're conflating the Bolsheviks with Stalin -- you do that a lot. They were internal *rivals*, actually, and if you want to blame anyone for *genocide*, that would be the *Nazis* who *advocated* it, and then carried it out due to the negligence of the Western Allies:

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

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


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Would you describe your politics as being 'technocratic'? It's the status-quo *now*, and is accelerating in concentration (technological elitism), according to the increasing use of automation, over industrial production.



wat0n wrote:
To some extent, yes. Certainly technology is a key determinant of what can be materially feasible, don't you think?



But what's at-issue is who gets to *control* such -- my concern is the Wizard-of-Oz man-behind-the-curtain development of *intense* technological elitism, which is undemocratic. Why should *private elitists* control automated mass production, for their benefit, when they're the only ones in the factory and it's the *machines* doing all the work?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
A transportation worker is providing a *service* commodity, and their wages are ultimately determined by the balance of *class* forces, in class warfare -- the *less* class-conscious struggle going on among such workers, the *lower* their wages will be because the bosses / government employer will just get away with paying them less. Of course the transportation worker's work generates revenue, because they're producing a *commodity*, that customers *pay* for, that of geography-spanning transit.

To the *consumer* of transportation, transportation is just an overcost *cost* -- people commute in order to get to the *productive* work that they may or may not do.

As usual you're getting mixed-up, by digressing -- the *janitor* provides a service, but it's sheerly a *drain* on revenue, the same as all executives, because it's strictly an *internal overhead cost* to the business entity itself, without producing any commodities that can be sold for revenue (the M-C-M' cycle).



wat0n wrote:
I'm referring to transportation done or paid for by the business. It is no different from janitors in this regard, if their work is necessary to generate revenue,



Regarding any given business that uses / outsources their *transportation* requirements, such purchased transportation service is *not* producing commodities for that company / any company. Transportation is an overhead *cost* to the business.

Likewise, janitorial services, whether in-house or outsourced, is *also* an overhead cost to the business that does *not* produce commodities for the company -- it's the *wage workers* who produce the commodities, and they have a *direct claim* to some proportion of the incoming revenue from the sale of the products that they produced.

Why aren't you *getting* this? You're intelligent enough to understand my explanation, but I'm having to repeat myself over and over on the same point. Please acknowledge *some* kind of understanding here. Overhead costs to business do *not* produce commodities, or revenue, for that business.


wat0n wrote:
then they are contributing to it indirectly and this contribution needs to be recognized to make judgments.



It's a *market economy*, day-by-day, so companies have to go to *the markets* (whether in-house employees, or outsourced services), to provide necessary inputs to the business entity itself, that do *not* produce commodities for the company.


wat0n wrote:
This is also a way of how your example about exploitation above is flawed.



This is vague -- you may want to rephrase to make it clearer in meaning.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, not everyone is as financially meticulous as you are -- some people just have cash lying around without having *planned* it that way.



wat0n wrote:
Sure, I also have some of it too - around $8. But we are talking about relevant amounts of money - just how many people have something like $10k or $100k lying around (save for those dealing with illicit activities)?



Um, lemme ask around.


= D


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, that's fair, and that's the initial impression / understanding I had.



wat0n wrote:
Yup, I think the distinction is more common in academia. One of the problems with Marxism however is that the Marxian paradigm is also flawed as we've come to learn over time.



Yet-more vacuous *accusations* -- why don't you *say* what you think are 'flaws'?


wat0n wrote:
It's why the Revolution was actually successful (somewhat) in what was at best a late feudal or early industrial society rather than the already industrialized societies like those in Western Europe. According to Marx, this was not supposed to happen.



Okay, again, please provide some kind of *source* for your historical contentions.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
My understanding is that the U.S. was able to *improve* on certain industrial implementations, like the tightness of the turns in their railroad tracks, which conferred a logistical improvement / advantage at the time.



wat0n wrote:
Correct, but it didn't quite rely on colonialism. It also had other major advantages, e.g. its geography.



Yeah, no shit -- the U.S. was the luckiest country *ever*. Not so much anymore, as evidenced by the Trump presidency.

It *became* an empire, though, in 1898.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Was Marx really a stagist, as you're contending here? Do you have any references to corroborate this contention of yours?



wat0n wrote:
Wasn't his theory of history essentially stagist?



You tell *me*, with references.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm talking about *full automation*, not past-centuries *industrialization*.

Oftentimes it's *cheaper* to just hire cheap labor than to fully *automate*, so capitalism / the market mechanism favors low-wage labor, which is a *disincentive* to industrialize and automate. That's why the issue is still a *question*, theoretically, instead of being a *given*, as *you* assume.



wat0n wrote:
Right, but labor is cheaper for some tasks only - which is why there is an ongoing process of automation. It's also why I'm saying it depends on technological development, mainly.



Yeah, but I'm trying to indicate that the *social relations* of a mode-of-production (capitalism) can *fetter* that seemingly-juggernaut-like advance of technological progress -- for example, we still have *feudal-like* *property* relations -- rentier capital -- for the capitalist-mode-of-production-sake of *defining private property parcels*, like one lot from the next, and so rentier capital, in particular, is *non-productive* of commodities, yet continues to be rewarded, feudal-like, with interest and rent payments, from pre-existing value, just for existing. Shouldn't *rentier capital* have somehow been 'automated' by now?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
These ideologies are all shown on my one-dimensional left-right political spectrum, above -- see 'Trotskyism' for Bolshevism, and 'identity politics' for radical feminism. 'Chavism' would be 'left-nationalism'.



wat0n wrote:
Would you explain your reasoning behind your sorting from left to right?



That's what the underlying 'platforms' are for -- 'traditional' vs. 'modern', etc.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You have to understand what *material* interests are -- it's not necessary strictly a *legal* thing. Once someone has capital invested, to make gains, their material interests are with that *capital*, since they can improve their lifestyle based on that source of material income.

Workers, on the other hand, only have *themselves*, collectively, against the opposite interests of the bosses and bourgeois government. They do not benefit from capital because they don't have it, as capitalists do.

Yes, workers solidarity is not automatic -- there's the countervailing social force of 'false consciousness', unfortunately.



wat0n wrote:
When workers save part of their income, they are actually owning some amount of capital. What stops many of them to start a co-op with their savings?



I don't know -- have you *asked* any? (I think it's probably more of a case-by-case thing.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Predictions' isn't the appropriate term to use here -- you're thinking of *clinical science*. Revolutionary activity is about overthrowing existing *class hegemony* -- it's a social *development*, rather than a relatively passive *observation*, or prediction.



wat0n wrote:
Marxism purports to be "scientific socialism", based on the Marxian paradigm. Of course contrasting their claims with what actually happens in this regard.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I *did* address your question -- the workers took control of factory production after the overthrow of the tsar, so there was no conventional 'stage' of bourgeois development in Russia, in the early 20th century, before Stalin and Stalinism (USSR).



wat0n wrote:
Was there a bourgeoisie during Stalinism?



I recall that Stalin *reversed* Lenin's backsliding NEP, which itself *had* reintroduced capitalists and capitalism to some degree, to get the destroyed economy back up-and-running again -- so, no.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Since capital is professionally managed anyway, it could just be corporate-*entity* capital entirely, with all managers / executive employees receiving a salary so that present-day private / individual *ownership* wouldn't have to be rewarded with surplus labor value -- the surplus labor value could go to the workers who are making the commodities (goods and/or services) for the company, instead of being expropriated for the sake of private / individual ownership interests.

What you call '[financial] risk' is *anachronistic* because virtually all sizeable capital is *professionally managed* today, so it's just an executive / managerial function, anyway, and is also subject to financial-industry *culture*, or coordination, internally, as with cartels and price-fixing.



wat0n wrote:
Just because capital is being professionally managed, it doesn't mean capitalists are not taking risks.



Let me *clarify* -- *corporate capital* is *pooled* capital, which is *collectively* managed (ironically) by professional financial managers who have access to *better* information than the layman investor him- or herself. Over the long term they'll do better with finding *returns* on that invested, pooled capital, since they're doing it professionally, all the time. The individual investor, by *paying* for this financial-information service, is *offloading* risk, to the professional investor.

So -- by extension, private ownership of capital is increasingly *meaningless*, since no capital owner is going to manage their *own* capital *unprofessionally*, because who wants to take that kind of risk?

So as greater and greater amounts of capital are *pooled* this way, it makes more sense to just have pooled-*management* of all capital, which would-be / is-already a white-collar executive-type role, while ownership itself has no *cutting-edge*, 'vanguard' kind of role, really, because the *management* of capital has been *outsourced* to professional money-managers.

The only remaining step, then, is for society to *recognize* this, and stop allowing mere ownership to be rewarded with labor's surplus labor value -- let the workers *keep* their value, for a bigger slice of the pie, since capital ownership isn't even *managing* its own capital in the productive process that *exploits* the labor-power of wage workers.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're conflating financial 'transaction costs', with collective-worker *coordination*, as on a *solidarity* basis. Money ('economics') is not the same thing as socio-political organizing ('politics'), for proletarian common interests.

My post-capitalist model shows that the market mechanism is *not objectively needed* for getting information about (organic) mass demand -- such could be done from mass-aggregated individuals' *shopping lists*, essentially, and provided in generalized data, from such mass aggregations, per rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.), per day, to the public.

The *point* of workers-of-the-world socialism is to *eliminate* the market mechanism, and all exchange values and exchanges, in favor of worker-controlled production, and full-automation, to produce directly to the consumer.



wat0n wrote:
I'm not referring to financial transaction costs exclusively. For instance, the process of coordinating, bargaining, etc is also costly (sometimes way too costly).



Yes, for *any* given productive paradigm (mode-of-production) what you're describing is called 'social organization'. If it's *not* the market mechanism, then it has to be done *collectively*, intentionally, and cooperatively -- socialism.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, you're acknowledging that you're more of a *statist* than a 'free market' type, because you're *okay* with the government's 'War on Drugs', that legally creates the barbaric drug-trade illicit market.

The *alternative*, as I've already mentioned, is for the *government* to be the single-payer *dispensary* for all things pharmaceutical- / drug-related, including all necessary health care and clinical services for use and abuse.

Since you're already a statist why not go *full government* and cut out the private-sector middleman *altogether*? People wouldn't have to pay for the add-on cost of private profits anymore, this way.



wat0n wrote:
Not really. I think they should be legalized, taxed and regulated, at least based on the effects of illegalization.



By continuing to rely on the market mechanism, though, you're *retaining* the *cost* of profits, even though you previously at least made some *lip-service* in the direction of *eliminating* the cost of profits:


ckaihatsu wrote:
it's about *economics*, and how everyone can cut-out the middleman of private interests, and cut out payments for profits, by simply *seizing* the means of mass industrial production, so that it can benefit *everyone*.



wat0n wrote:
Of course I'm incorporating those costs too.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, no, you're *not* -- you've never mentioned 'the cost of profit', nor are you now, nor have 'free market' types ever mentioned it, either.
#15135023
ckaihatsu wrote:---


Again, the "Constituent" Assembly (lol, can anyone even find a draft Constitution to read? We've been waiting for 3 years so fat) has plenipotentiary powers. It is above the National Assembly, Courts and Maduro himself, actually, and as such it can replace any judges who don't tow to the regime's line.

Venezuela became a formal dictatorship in 2017, when a single body was placed above all branches of government.

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, if *Bush* could be installed into the U.S. presidency by the Supreme Court, then I guess that serves as *precedent*, and the U.S. should not be objecting -- much less fomenting coups -- in places like Venezuela.


Bush was not "installed" by the SCOTUS, though. And the division of powers is (thankfully) alive and kicking in the US.

ckaihatsu wrote:'Negotiations' with *who*, exactly? Workers have no *interests* in negotiating with those who rob them of their wages each and every day ('surplus labor value'). By ignoring *class interests* you're ignoring the real *politics* of the world situation at the broadest scale of society.


Negotiating with their employers of course. Funnily enough there's plenty of examples where this is the way in which things are done.

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, 'dictatorship' there is a misnomer, and I don't advocate for Stalinism, anyway, ideologically, because it *disempowers* the workers like any *other* nation-state. Sure, I'll *defend* left-nationalist governments in Latin America, etc., against Western imperialist predations, but I don't *tout* nationalism of any kind as any desired goal for the working class.

'Gulagization' would just be a revolutionary *tactic*, if needed. Note that it wouldn't be *Stalinist*, though, as you and Sivad imply -- it would have to be on the basis of working class power and organization.


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image


Dictatorship is not a misnomer for what's been going on in Venezuela since 2017. It did away with the division of powers and formalized it.

ckaihatsu wrote:You should *elaborate* on where you stand and what your politics *are*, because you tend to be *evasive* about such. Do you have any kind of overall / ideological political *statement* to put forth?


I'm guessing I could be considered to fall within the liberal spectrum.

ckaihatsu wrote:Oh, you're conflating the Bolsheviks with Stalin -- you do that a lot. They were internal *rivals*, actually, and if you want to blame anyone for *genocide*, that would be the *Nazis* who *advocated* it, and then carried it out due to the negligence of the Western Allies:

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

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


The pauperization of the Ukrainian population began before Stalin, and this genocide denial is cute but stupid at this point.

If it was not deliberate, then they were so incompetent as to starve much of the Ukrainian population. You are free to pick your poison here :)

ckaihatsu wrote:But what's at-issue is who gets to *control* such -- my concern is the Wizard-of-Oz man-behind-the-curtain development of *intense* technological elitism, which is undemocratic. Why should *private elitists* control automated mass production, for their benefit, when they're the only ones in the factory and it's the *machines* doing all the work?


You can't control that which doesn't exist, though.

ckaihatsu wrote:Regarding any given business that uses / outsources their *transportation* requirements, such purchased transportation service is *not* producing commodities for that company / any company. Transportation is an overhead *cost* to the business.

Likewise, janitorial services, whether in-house or outsourced, is *also* an overhead cost to the business that does *not* produce commodities for the company -- it's the *wage workers* who produce the commodities, and they have a *direct claim* to some proportion of the incoming revenue from the sale of the products that they produced.

Why aren't you *getting* this? You're intelligent enough to understand my explanation, but I'm having to repeat myself over and over on the same point. Please acknowledge *some* kind of understanding here. Overhead costs to business do *not* produce commodities, or revenue, for that business.


Because I'm questioning the judgment you are making: They are not "just" overhead costs. They are necessary for generating revenue and therefore contribute to it indirectly.

ckaihatsu wrote:It's a *market economy*, day-by-day, so companies have to go to *the markets* (whether in-house employees, or outsourced services), to provide necessary inputs to the business entity itself, that do *not* produce commodities for the company.


So?

ckaihatsu wrote:This is vague -- you may want to rephrase to make it clearer in meaning.


When introducing an example to illustrate exploitation, you are assuming workers can be easily credited for generating (say) $40 in revenue/unit. But what happens with those workers who do not generate directly, but do so indirectly by (internally) providing services that allow the company to function at all?

Quite obviously, their contribution (their value added) exists and should be estimated. How would you do so? In economic statistics, one way to do it is to simply assume it equals their wages.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yet-more vacuous *accusations* -- why don't you *say* what you think are 'flaws'?


I think those are well-known, aren't they? The Marxian paradigm in economics - as it happens with the Labor Theory of Value - cannot explain well the Paradox of Water and Diamonds. It also cannot explain well deviations from rationality or market/government failures in general (this is an issue with the basic neoclassical framework too).

Likewise, some of the key Marxian predictions didn't quite pan out that way.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, again, please provide some kind of *source* for your historical contentions.


Which of all? The Marxian view of history (e.g. as explained in The Communist Manifesto) or that the candidates for a successful revolution were not in fact industrialized, counter to his vision of history?

ckaihatsu wrote:Yeah, no shit -- the U.S. was the luckiest country *ever*. Not so much anymore, as evidenced by the Trump presidency.

It *became* an empire, though, in 1898.


It was already industrialized by 1898 - I would say that the empire was actually a consequence rather than a cause of industrialization. And honestly, people like Buchanan were much, much worse than Trump.

ckaihatsu wrote:You tell *me*, with references.


How would you describe his position in this matter in The Manifesto?

ckaihatsu wrote:Yeah, but I'm trying to indicate that the *social relations* of a mode-of-production (capitalism) can *fetter* that seemingly-juggernaut-like advance of technological progress -- for example, we still have *feudal-like* *property* relations -- rentier capital -- for the capitalist-mode-of-production-sake of *defining private property parcels*, like one lot from the next, and so rentier capital, in particular, is *non-productive* of commodities, yet continues to be rewarded, feudal-like, with interest and rent payments, from pre-existing value, just for existing. Shouldn't *rentier capital* have somehow been 'automated' by now?


How can you do that? I would need you to elaborate. It seems to me that's because technology hasn't advanced all that much as to be able to create land cheaply, with all the properties that come with it.

ckaihatsu wrote:That's what the underlying 'platforms' are for -- 'traditional' vs. 'modern', etc.


But why are e.g. Trots to the left of Marxists?

ckaihatsu wrote:I don't know -- have you *asked* any? (I think it's probably more of a case-by-case thing.)


I think transaction costs are a reason. It's not easy to coordinate so many people to form cooperatives.

ckaihatsu wrote:I recall that Stalin *reversed* Lenin's backsliding NEP, which itself *had* reintroduced capitalists and capitalism to some degree, to get the destroyed economy back up-and-running again -- so, no.


So would you say it had fulfilled its stated goal of wiping the capitalists out, thereby making those extreme levels of centralization unjustifiable?

ckaihatsu wrote:Let me *clarify* -- *corporate capital* is *pooled* capital, which is *collectively* managed (ironically) by professional financial managers who have access to *better* information than the layman investor him- or herself. Over the long term they'll do better with finding *returns* on that invested, pooled capital, since they're doing it professionally, all the time. The individual investor, by *paying* for this financial-information service, is *offloading* risk, to the professional investor.

So -- by extension, private ownership of capital is increasingly *meaningless*, since no capital owner is going to manage their *own* capital *unprofessionally*, because who wants to take that kind of risk?

So as greater and greater amounts of capital are *pooled* this way, it makes more sense to just have pooled-*management* of all capital, which would-be / is-already a white-collar executive-type role, while ownership itself has no *cutting-edge*, 'vanguard' kind of role, really, because the *management* of capital has been *outsourced* to professional money-managers.

The only remaining step, then, is for society to *recognize* this, and stop allowing mere ownership to be rewarded with labor's surplus labor value -- let the workers *keep* their value, for a bigger slice of the pie, since capital ownership isn't even *managing* its own capital in the productive process that *exploits* the labor-power of wage workers.


One thing they are often doing is that they accept to take the risks - if the pros mess up, they stand more to lose than the managers themselves even (this was clearly shown in the subprime crisis and CEO compensation).

Ironically, too, when it comes to financial capital often even professional managers will fail to beat the market. In fact, the vast majority will.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yes, for *any* given productive paradigm (mode-of-production) what you're describing is called 'social organization'. If it's *not* the market mechanism, then it has to be done *collectively*, intentionally, and cooperatively -- socialism.


Exactly, but the market mechanism can help save those costs by having the price system to provide quick information about what's going on. Of course, such a system is not perfect and can and does sometimes provide information that does not lead to socially desirable outcomes. But, in many cases, it's still useful.

ckaihatsu wrote:By continuing to rely on the market mechanism, though, you're *retaining* the *cost* of profits, even though you previously at least made some *lip-service* in the direction of *eliminating* the cost of profits:


Just to be sure, what do you mean by "cost of profits" here?
#15135189
wat0n wrote:
Again, the "Constituent" Assembly (lol, can anyone even find a draft Constitution to read? We've been waiting for 3 years so fat) has plenipotentiary powers. It is above the National Assembly, Courts and Maduro himself, actually, and as such it can replace any judges who don't tow to the regime's line.

Venezuela became a formal dictatorship in 2017, when a single body was placed above all branches of government.



Not according to Wikipedia:



Maduro's new six-year term did not begin until 10 January 2019, when he took his official oath at a public ceremony in Caracas in front of the Venezuelan Supreme Court.[133] The ceremony was attended by spectators such as Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and president of Bolivia Evo Morales.[133]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Vene ... #Aftermath



My previous point *stands*, that:


ckaihatsu wrote:
My point is that the U.S. *interfered* in both countries, which is effectively *colonialism* and *imperialism* all over again, or 'neocolonialism':



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, if *Bush* could be installed into the U.S. presidency by the Supreme Court, then I guess that serves as *precedent*, and the U.S. should not be objecting -- much less fomenting coups -- in places like Venezuela.



wat0n wrote:
Bush was not "installed" by the SCOTUS, though. And the division of powers is (thankfully) alive and kicking in the US.



The Supreme Court *stopped* the regular procedural ballot recounting process in Florida -- you can call that checks-and-balances, if you like, or we can compare it to the crowning of Napoleon as emperor, by the clergy:



Napoleon wanted to establish the legitimacy of his imperial reign, with its new dynasty and new nobility. To this end, he designed a new coronation ceremony unlike that for the kings of France, which had emphasized the king's consecration (sacre) and anointment and was conferred by the archbishop of Reims in Reims Cathedral.[2] Napoleon's was a sacred ceremony held in the great cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the presence of Pope Pius VII. Napoleon brought together various rites and customs, incorporating ceremonies of Carolingian tradition, the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, all presented in sumptuous luxury.[3]



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Negotiations' with *who*, exactly? Workers have no *interests* in negotiating with those who rob them of their wages each and every day ('surplus labor value'). By ignoring *class interests* you're ignoring the real *politics* of the world situation at the broadest scale of society.



wat0n wrote:
Negotiating with their employers of course. Funnily enough there's plenty of examples where this is the way in which things are done.



So you're *for* collective bargaining, then?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, 'dictatorship' there is a misnomer, and I don't advocate for Stalinism, anyway, ideologically, because it *disempowers* the workers like any *other* nation-state. Sure, I'll *defend* left-nationalist governments in Latin America, etc., against Western imperialist predations, but I don't *tout* nationalism of any kind as any desired goal for the working class.

'Gulagization' would just be a revolutionary *tactic*, if needed. Note that it wouldn't be *Stalinist*, though, as you and Sivad imply -- it would have to be on the basis of working class power and organization.


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Dictatorship is not a misnomer for what's been going on in Venezuela since 2017. It did away with the division of powers and formalized it.



Maybe tell the U.S. to stop fomenting coups in Latin America, then.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You should *elaborate* on where you stand and what your politics *are*, because you tend to be *evasive* about such. Do you have any kind of overall / ideological political *statement* to put forth?



wat0n wrote:
I'm guessing I could be considered to fall within the liberal spectrum.



Do you mean status-quo liberal, or do you mean reformist liberal?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, you're conflating the Bolsheviks with Stalin -- you do that a lot. They were internal *rivals*, actually, and if you want to blame anyone for *genocide*, that would be the *Nazis* who *advocated* it, and then carried it out due to the negligence of the Western Allies:

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

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



wat0n wrote:
The pauperization of the Ukrainian population began before Stalin, and this genocide denial is cute but stupid at this point.

If it was not deliberate, then they were so incompetent as to starve much of the Ukrainian population. You are free to pick your poison here :)



It was Stalin playing catch-up on *industrialization*, with imperialist invasions -- not help -- from the already-industrialized West.

Compare-and-contrast:


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

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


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
But what's at-issue is who gets to *control* such -- my concern is the Wizard-of-Oz man-behind-the-curtain development of *intense* technological elitism, which is undemocratic. Why should *private elitists* control automated mass production, for their benefit, when they're the only ones in the factory and it's the *machines* doing all the work?



wat0n wrote:
You can't control that which doesn't exist, though.



This is a *warning* -- I'm saying that capitalist economics and the bourgeois ruling class are going to be even *more* out-of-date as automation progresses, because it will concentrate wealth *even more*, to those who are the relatively few owners of completely-automated industrial mass production processes (factories).

Politically this kind of economics is *undemocratic* -- and, if you want to show any 'democratic' credentials, for political credibility, this is the kind of issue that's all about democratic-versus-undemocratic.



Impact on society

Academic studies[8][9] project that RPA, among other technological trends, is expected to drive a new wave of productivity and efficiency gains in the global labour market. Although not directly attributable to RPA alone, Oxford University conjectures that up to 35% of all jobs might be automated by 2035.[8]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_p ... mation_2.0



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Regarding any given business that uses / outsources their *transportation* requirements, such purchased transportation service is *not* producing commodities for that company / any company. Transportation is an overhead *cost* to the business.

Likewise, janitorial services, whether in-house or outsourced, is *also* an overhead cost to the business that does *not* produce commodities for the company -- it's the *wage workers* who produce the commodities, and they have a *direct claim* to some proportion of the incoming revenue from the sale of the products that they produced.

Why aren't you *getting* this? You're intelligent enough to understand my explanation, but I'm having to repeat myself over and over on the same point. Please acknowledge *some* kind of understanding here. Overhead costs to business do *not* produce commodities, or revenue, for that business.



wat0n wrote:
Because I'm questioning the judgment you are making: They are not "just" overhead costs. They are necessary for generating revenue and therefore contribute to it indirectly.



But these non-productive roles of janitor and executive positions do *not* generate revenue -- they do not produce commodities for the company. Only *wage labor* produces commodities for the company that are then sold for a *profit*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
A transportation worker is providing a *service* commodity, and their wages are ultimately determined by the balance of *class* forces, in class warfare -- the *less* class-conscious struggle going on among such workers, the *lower* their wages will be because the bosses / government employer will just get away with paying them less. Of course the transportation worker's work generates revenue, because they're producing a *commodity*, that customers *pay* for, that of geography-spanning transit.

To the *consumer* of transportation, transportation is just an overcost *cost* -- people commute in order to get to the *productive* work that they may or may not do.

As usual you're getting mixed-up, by digressing -- the *janitor* provides a service, but it's sheerly a *drain* on revenue, the same as all executives, because it's strictly an *internal overhead cost* to the business entity itself, without producing any commodities that can be sold for revenue (the M-C-M' cycle).



wat0n wrote:
then they are contributing to it indirectly and this contribution needs to be recognized to make judgments.



ckaihatsu wrote:
It's a *market economy*, day-by-day, so companies have to go to *the markets* (whether in-house employees, or outsourced services), to provide necessary inputs to the business entity itself, that do *not* produce commodities for the company.



wat0n wrote:
So?



In-house or outsourced transportation (a service) does *not* produce commodities for the company, just as janitor work and executive roles do not produce commodities for the company, either.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is vague -- you may want to rephrase to make it clearer in meaning.



wat0n wrote:
When introducing an example to illustrate exploitation, you are assuming workers can be easily credited for generating (say) $40 in revenue/unit. But what happens with those workers who do not generate directly, but do so indirectly by (internally) providing services that allow the company to function at all?



Services like transportation do not produce commodities for the company. Wage laborers *do* produce commodities for the company.


wat0n wrote:
Quite obviously, their contribution (their value added) exists and should be estimated. How would you do so? In economic statistics, one way to do it is to simply assume it equals their wages.



Non-productive roles are a *cost* to the company that do not produce commodities for the company.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yet-more vacuous *accusations* -- why don't you *say* what you think are 'flaws'?



wat0n wrote:
I think those are well-known, aren't they? The Marxian paradigm in economics - as it happens with the Labor Theory of Value - cannot explain well the Paradox of Water and Diamonds.



What's your critique of the labor theory of value?

The water-and-diamonds example contrasts the difference between capitalist *exchange values*, and consumer *use values*. Water has *infinite* use-value, since it's critical for biological life, while diamonds have very high *exchange value* since people will pay high prices for them, even though they're certainly not life-critical.


wat0n wrote:
It also cannot explain well deviations from rationality



This is vague.


wat0n wrote:
or market/government failures in general (this is an issue with the basic neoclassical framework too).



Marxism *notes* the capitalist boom-and-bust cycle.



Marxian
Objections also exist on more fundamental bases, such as Marxian analysis. Colloquial uses of the term "market failure" reflect the notion of a market "failing" to provide some desired attribute different from efficiency – for instance, high levels of inequality can be considered a "market failure", yet are not Pareto inefficient, and so would not be considered a market failure by mainstream economics.[3] In addition, many Marxian economists would argue that the system of private property rights is a fundamental problem in itself, and that resources should be allocated in another way entirely. This is different from concepts of "market failure" which focuses on specific situations – typically seen as "abnormal" – where markets have inefficient outcomes. Marxists, in contrast, would say that markets have inefficient and democratically unwanted outcomes – viewing market failure as an inherent feature of any capitalist economy – and typically omit it from discussion, preferring to ration finite goods not exclusively through a price mechanism, but based upon need as determined by society expressed through the community.



---


wat0n wrote:
Likewise, some of the key Marxian predictions didn't quite pan out that way.



Vague.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, again, please provide some kind of *source* for your historical contentions.



wat0n wrote:
Which of all? The Marxian view of history (e.g. as explained in The Communist Manifesto) or that the candidates for a successful revolution were not in fact industrialized, counter to his vision of history?



Surprise me.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, no shit -- the U.S. was the luckiest country *ever*. Not so much anymore, as evidenced by the Trump presidency.

It *became* an empire, though, in 1898.



wat0n wrote:
It was already industrialized by 1898 - I would say that the empire was actually a consequence rather than a cause of industrialization. And honestly, people like Buchanan were much, much worse than Trump.



'Empire' implies *acquisition of foreign territory*:



The war led to the U.S. emerging as predominant in the Caribbean region,[15] and resulted in U.S. acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E ... erican_War



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Was Marx really a stagist, as you're contending here? Do you have any references to corroborate this contention of yours?



wat0n wrote:
Wasn't his theory of history essentially stagist?



ckaihatsu wrote:
You tell *me*, with references.



wat0n wrote:
How would you describe his position in this matter in The Manifesto?



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm talking about *full automation*, not past-centuries *industrialization*.

Oftentimes it's *cheaper* to just hire cheap labor than to fully *automate*, so capitalism / the market mechanism favors low-wage labor, which is a *disincentive* to industrialize and automate. That's why the issue is still a *question*, theoretically, instead of being a *given*, as *you* assume.



wat0n wrote:
Right, but labor is cheaper for some tasks only - which is why there is an ongoing process of automation. It's also why I'm saying it depends on technological development, mainly.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, but I'm trying to indicate that the *social relations* of a mode-of-production (capitalism) can *fetter* that seemingly-juggernaut-like advance of technological progress -- for example, we still have *feudal-like* *property* relations -- rentier capital -- for the capitalist-mode-of-production-sake of *defining private property parcels*, like one lot from the next, and so rentier capital, in particular, is *non-productive* of commodities, yet continues to be rewarded, feudal-like, with interest and rent payments, from pre-existing value, just for existing. Shouldn't *rentier capital* have somehow been 'automated' by now?



wat0n wrote:
How can you do that? I would need you to elaborate. It seems to me that's because technology hasn't advanced all that much as to be able to create land cheaply, with all the properties that come with it.



Exactly -- you're making my point *for* me here -- despite vaunting technological progress there still exists feudal-like, non-productive *rentier capital*, that *cannot* be automated. It's a *fetter* on both equity capital *and* wages, yet it's still around.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
That's what the underlying 'platforms' are for -- 'traditional' vs. 'modern', etc.



wat0n wrote:
But why are e.g. Trots to the left of Marxists?



Trotskyism basically *internationalized* the implementation of socialist revolution, by saying that not each and every country has to go through its own stagist process of bourgeois revolution and capitalist development of infrastructure -- with enough international revolutionary area and momentum those areas that come under workers control can *lift up* those other areas of the world in revolution, but which may have not yet revolutionized / industrialized their own areas yet.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't know -- have you *asked* any? (I think it's probably more of a case-by-case thing.)



wat0n wrote:
I think transaction costs are a reason. It's not easy to coordinate so many people to form cooperatives.



Well, I don't advocate such, anyway, for the reasons I've already given, plus I'm not an anarchist. I advocate an expanding workers state, worldwide, that is formidable enough to repress and overthrow the world's bourgeoisie.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I recall that Stalin *reversed* Lenin's backsliding NEP, which itself *had* reintroduced capitalists and capitalism to some degree, to get the destroyed economy back up-and-running again -- so, no.



wat0n wrote:
So would you say it had fulfilled its stated goal of wiping the capitalists out, thereby making those extreme levels of centralization unjustifiable?



I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, since I'm not a Stalinist.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Let me *clarify* -- *corporate capital* is *pooled* capital, which is *collectively* managed (ironically) by professional financial managers who have access to *better* information than the layman investor him- or herself. Over the long term they'll do better with finding *returns* on that invested, pooled capital, since they're doing it professionally, all the time. The individual investor, by *paying* for this financial-information service, is *offloading* risk, to the professional investor.

So -- by extension, private ownership of capital is increasingly *meaningless*, since no capital owner is going to manage their *own* capital *unprofessionally*, because who wants to take that kind of risk?

So as greater and greater amounts of capital are *pooled* this way, it makes more sense to just have pooled-*management* of all capital, which would-be / is-already a white-collar executive-type role, while ownership itself has no *cutting-edge*, 'vanguard' kind of role, really, because the *management* of capital has been *outsourced* to professional money-managers.

The only remaining step, then, is for society to *recognize* this, and stop allowing mere ownership to be rewarded with labor's surplus labor value -- let the workers *keep* their value, for a bigger slice of the pie, since capital ownership isn't even *managing* its own capital in the productive process that *exploits* the labor-power of wage workers.



wat0n wrote:
One thing they are often doing is that they accept to take the risks - if the pros mess up, they stand more to lose than the managers themselves even (this was clearly shown in the subprime crisis and CEO compensation).

Ironically, too, when it comes to financial capital often even professional managers will fail to beat the market. In fact, the vast majority will.



Yet that's arguably the best that the investors have -- professional management of capital, or else they have to do the research / work themselves.

My point stands that the professional management of pooled capital would be sufficient for the continuation of capitalism, *without* profits to ownership, so that surplus labor value can go to the wage workers themselves.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, for *any* given productive paradigm (mode-of-production) what you're describing is called 'social organization'. If it's *not* the market mechanism, then it has to be done *collectively*, intentionally, and cooperatively -- socialism.



wat0n wrote:
Exactly, but the market mechanism can help save those costs by having the price system to provide quick information about what's going on. Of course, such a system is not perfect and can and does sometimes provide information that does not lead to socially desirable outcomes. But, in many cases, it's still useful.



You're missing the point -- workers-of-the-world socialism *doesn't require* exchange values whatsoever. I just outlined, from my model, how organic mass demand could be ascertained over any given locality, or larger geographic area, simply by mass-aggregating individually ranked 'demands' lists (shopping lists) on a daily basis, by rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.). This information would be publicly available and would be the empirical impetus to emergent 'social organization', for production, for liberated-labor, post-capitalism.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
By continuing to rely on the market mechanism, though, you're *retaining* the *cost* of profits, even though you previously at least made some *lip-service* in the direction of *eliminating* the cost of profits:



wat0n wrote:
Just to be sure, what do you mean by "cost of profits" here?



Since productive machinery (factories) is held *privately*, those private-property owners add a profit 'markup' to the cost / price that they charge for producing consumer commodities -- things that people *need* for modern life and living.

I already described how ownership could simply be absorbed into the corporate pools of capital under professional financial management, so that the cost of profits could be *eliminated*, and so that wage workers could receive the hourly surplus labor value that they should be getting anyway.
#15136507
ckaihatsu wrote:Not according to Wikipedia:

My previous point *stands*, that:


How does it sustain your point? :eh:

Fact remains that Venezuela is being ruled by an entity that is above all branches of government.

ckaihatsu wrote:The Supreme Court *stopped* the regular procedural ballot recounting process in Florida -- you can call that checks-and-balances, if you like, or we can compare it to the crowning of Napoleon as emperor, by the clergy:


Pretty stupid analogy, and you know it. The US Constitution sets hard deadlines for ending the electoral process.

ckaihatsu wrote:So you're *for* collective bargaining, then?


Sure.

ckaihatsu wrote:Maybe tell the U.S. to stop fomenting coups in Latin America, then.


Oh, so dictatorships are actually fine to you, aren't they?

ckaihatsu wrote:Do you mean status-quo liberal, or do you mean reformist liberal?


Depends on the issue.

ckaihatsu wrote:It was Stalin playing catch-up on *industrialization*, with imperialist invasions -- not help -- from the already-industrialized West.

Compare-and-contrast:


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

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


Full on Stalinist defense? :eh:

The funny thing is, these defenses somehow do not apply when the perpetrator is (say) the British Empire, the year is (say) 1846 and the geographical area is (say) Ireland.

:)

ckaihatsu wrote:This is a *warning* -- I'm saying that capitalist economics and the bourgeois ruling class are going to be even *more* out-of-date as automation progresses, because it will concentrate wealth *even more*, to those who are the relatively few owners of completely-automated industrial mass production processes (factories).

Politically this kind of economics is *undemocratic* -- and, if you want to show any 'democratic' credentials, for political credibility, this is the kind of issue that's all about democratic-versus-undemocratic.


Why would it be "out of date"? For all we know, this could actually be how industrial progress looks like. That's something I can imagine Qatz saying.

I don't think we can fully know what will the consequences of the current automation wave be.

ckaihatsu wrote:But these non-productive roles of janitor and executive positions do *not* generate revenue -- they do not produce commodities for the company. Only *wage labor* produces commodities for the company that are then sold for a *profit*.


ckaihatsu wrote:In-house or outsourced transportation (a service) does *not* produce commodities for the company, just as janitor work and executive roles do not produce commodities for the company, either.


ckaihatsu wrote:Services like transportation do not produce commodities for the company. Wage laborers *do* produce commodities for the company.


ckaihatsu wrote:Non-productive roles are a *cost* to the company that do not produce commodities for the company.


If you need their labor to have the infrastructure necessary generate revenue, then they do generate revenue even if indirectly. What you are saying is that (basically) the guys from the IT Dept in a bank should not be taken into account in this analysis, even though the bank simply cannot operate without access to the internet or an IT infrastructure.

ckaihatsu wrote:What's your critique of the labor theory of value?

The water-and-diamonds example contrasts the difference between capitalist *exchange values*, and consumer *use values*. Water has *infinite* use-value, since it's critical for biological life, while diamonds have very high *exchange value* since people will pay high prices for them, even though they're certainly not life-critical.


And then, what can you conclude from this example given that people are not willing to pay an infinite amount of money for water?

ckaihatsu wrote:This is vague.


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

ckaihatsu wrote:Marxism *notes* the capitalist boom-and-bust cycle.


Macroeconomic fluctuations are far from being the only market "failure" (technically, they are not even market failures). Here I'm thinking about concepts like adverse selection, information asymmetry, externalities, etc all of which were not deeply thought about by anyone during the 19th century.

ckaihatsu wrote:Vague.


Did the revolution begin in England?

ckaihatsu wrote:Surprise me.


Isn't section I. basically a an example of stagism?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... ifesto.pdf

ckaihatsu wrote:'Empire' implies *acquisition of foreign territory*:


Right, and the US had already industrialized by then.

ckaihatsu wrote:Exactly -- you're making my point *for* me here -- despite vaunting technological progress there still exists feudal-like, non-productive *rentier capital*, that *cannot* be automated. It's a *fetter* on both equity capital *and* wages, yet it's still around.


And that's an issue with the current state of technology - i.e. it can't be dealt with for now.

ckaihatsu wrote:Trotskyism basically *internationalized* the implementation of socialist revolution, by saying that not each and every country has to go through its own stagist process of bourgeois revolution and capitalist development of infrastructure -- with enough international revolutionary area and momentum those areas that come under workers control can *lift up* those other areas of the world in revolution, but which may have not yet revolutionized / industrialized their own areas yet.


OK, but why does it make him more leftist than Marx?

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, I don't advocate such, anyway, for the reasons I've already given, plus I'm not an anarchist. I advocate an expanding workers state, worldwide, that is formidable enough to repress and overthrow the world's bourgeoisie.


Yes, a global Stalinist state basically.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, since I'm not a Stalinist.


So?

ckaihatsu wrote:Yet that's arguably the best that the investors have -- professional management of capital, or else they have to do the research / work themselves.

My point stands that the professional management of pooled capital would be sufficient for the continuation of capitalism, *without* profits to ownership, so that surplus labor value can go to the wage workers themselves.


I don't think so, because a professional manager is basically being paid to do her job - without really risking her wealth in the process of investing.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're missing the point -- workers-of-the-world socialism *doesn't require* exchange values whatsoever. I just outlined, from my model, how organic mass demand could be ascertained over any given locality, or larger geographic area, simply by mass-aggregating individually ranked 'demands' lists (shopping lists) on a daily basis, by rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.). This information would be publicly available and would be the empirical impetus to emergent 'social organization', for production, for liberated-labor, post-capitalism.


I know that, but by virtue of being decentralized the price system can accomplish the same sort of outcome, but even more efficiently.

ckaihatsu wrote:Since productive machinery (factories) is held *privately*, those private-property owners add a profit 'markup' to the cost / price that they charge for producing consumer commodities -- things that people *need* for modern life and living.

I already described how ownership could simply be absorbed into the corporate pools of capital under professional financial management, so that the cost of profits could be *eliminated*, and so that wage workers could receive the hourly surplus labor value that they should be getting anyway.


I understand that you mean that by the "cost of profit". This still doesn't quite deal with the costs of risk the capitalist is taking on.
#15136526
ckaihatsu wrote:
Not according to Wikipedia:

My previous point *stands*, that:


Maduro's new six-year term did not begin until 10 January 2019, when he took his official oath at a public ceremony in Caracas in front of the Venezuelan Supreme Court.[133] The ceremony was attended by spectators such as Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and president of Bolivia Evo Morales.[133]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Vene ... #Aftermath


My point is that the U.S. *interfered* in both countries, which is effectively *colonialism* and *imperialism* all over again, or 'neocolonialism':



wat0n wrote:
How does it sustain your point? :eh:

Fact remains that Venezuela is being ruled by an entity that is above all branches of government.



No, it's Maduro's *elected presidency*. Also, it's had to recently fend-off a coup attempt from the U.S. -- a counterrevolution -- so that has to be factored-in as well.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The Supreme Court *stopped* the regular procedural ballot recounting process in Florida -- you can call that checks-and-balances, if you like, or we can compare it to the crowning of Napoleon as emperor, by the clergy:


Napoleon wanted to establish the legitimacy of his imperial reign, with its new dynasty and new nobility. To this end, he designed a new coronation ceremony unlike that for the kings of France, which had emphasized the king's consecration (sacre) and anointment and was conferred by the archbishop of Reims in Reims Cathedral.[2] Napoleon's was a sacred ceremony held in the great cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the presence of Pope Pius VII. Napoleon brought together various rites and customs, incorporating ceremonies of Carolingian tradition, the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, all presented in sumptuous luxury.[3]

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



wat0n wrote:
Pretty stupid analogy, and you know it. The US Constitution sets hard deadlines for ending the electoral process.



No, it's up to the *states*, on a state-by-state basis, so the Supreme Court effectively selected the president *from above*, like the clergy crowning Napoleon.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're *for* collective bargaining, then?



wat0n wrote:
Sure.



And just what *labor tactics* is allowed to labor and its collective bargaining, according to you? Work-to-rule? Strikes? Sit-downs?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Maybe tell the U.S. to stop fomenting coups in Latin America, then.



wat0n wrote:
Oh, so dictatorships are actually fine to you, aren't they?



I was asking you about *coups* from the U.S., which don't fit into your tidy little world of your imagining in which all politics is outlined by bourgeois *law*.

The quintessential Latin America dictator is *Batista*, and no, I wouldn't support dictators.



Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (/bəˈtiːstə/;[1] Spanish: [fulˈxensjo βaˈtista i salˈdiβaɾ]; born Rubén Zaldívar,[2] January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You should *elaborate* on where you stand and what your politics *are*, because you tend to be *evasive* about such. Do you have any kind of overall / ideological political *statement* to put forth?



wat0n wrote:
I'm guessing I could be considered to fall within the liberal spectrum.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you mean status-quo liberal, or do you mean reformist liberal?



wat0n wrote:
Depends on the issue.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It was Stalin playing catch-up on *industrialization*, with imperialist invasions -- not help -- from the already-industrialized West.

Compare-and-contrast:


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

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



wat0n wrote:
Full on Stalinist defense? :eh:



No, just recounting the most relevant facts of history. (Really.)


wat0n wrote:
The funny thing is, these defenses somehow do not apply when the perpetrator is (say) the British Empire, the year is (say) 1846 and the geographical area is (say) Ireland.

:)




From 1846, the impact of the blight was exacerbated by the Whig government's economic policy of laissez-faire capitalism.[11][12][13] Longer-term causes include the system of absentee landlordism,[14][15] and single-crop dependence.[16][17]



Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food. In the magazine History Ireland (1997, issue 5, pp. 32–36), Christine Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer, and Drew University professor, relates her findings: Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and related diseases. She also writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon, and ham actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland, the ports of the west coast. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, fish, oysters, lard, honey, tongues, and seed.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fam ... Ireland%29



Ireland *should have* independence:



The Irish Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for self-government (or "home rule") for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I.

Isaac Butt founded the Home Government Association in 1870. This was succeeded in 1873 by the Home Rule League, and in 1882 by the Irish Parliamentary Party. These organisations campaigned for home rule in the British House of Commons. Under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, the movement came close to success when the Liberal government of William Ewart Gladstone introduced the First Home Rule Bill in 1886, but the bill was defeated in the House of Commons after a split in the Liberal Party. After Parnell's death, Gladstone introduced the Second Home Rule Bill in 1893; it passed the Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords. After the removal of the Lords' veto in 1911, the Third Home Rule Bill was introduced in 1912, leading to the Home Rule Crisis. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I it was enacted, but implementation was suspended until the conclusion of the war.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is a *warning* -- I'm saying that capitalist economics and the bourgeois ruling class are going to be even *more* out-of-date as automation progresses, because it will concentrate wealth *even more*, to those who are the relatively few owners of completely-automated industrial mass production processes (factories).

Politically this kind of economics is *undemocratic* -- and, if you want to show any 'democratic' credentials, for political credibility, this is the kind of issue that's all about democratic-versus-undemocratic.



wat0n wrote:
Why would it be "out of date"? For all we know, this could actually be how industrial progress looks like. That's something I can imagine Qatz saying.

I don't think we can fully know what will the consequences of the current automation wave be.



I just *told* you -- under capitalist private-property-relations automation of mechanical production processes *concentrates* control of production into ever-*fewer* hands. Look at the current financial trend of stock *buybacks*, which concentrates ownership for the sake of increased internal valuations, to counter deflationary trends.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
But these non-productive roles of janitor and executive positions do *not* generate revenue -- they do not produce commodities for the company. Only *wage labor* produces commodities for the company that are then sold for a *profit*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
In-house or outsourced transportation (a service) does *not* produce commodities for the company, just as janitor work and executive roles do not produce commodities for the company, either.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Services like transportation do not produce commodities for the company. Wage laborers *do* produce commodities for the company.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Non-productive roles are a *cost* to the company that do not produce commodities for the company.



wat0n wrote:
If you need their labor to have the infrastructure necessary generate revenue, then they do generate revenue even if indirectly. What you are saying is that (basically) the guys from the IT Dept in a bank should not be taken into account in this analysis, even though the bank simply cannot operate without access to the internet or an IT infrastructure.



We've been going in circles several times now -- you want to insist on an 'indirect' route to revenue, by *non-productive* labor, but you're really just making shit up so as to avoid acknowledging that it's *wage labor* that *actually* produces commodities, which the company benefits from.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What's your critique of the labor theory of value?

The water-and-diamonds example contrasts the difference between capitalist *exchange values*, and consumer *use values*. Water has *infinite* use-value, since it's critical for biological life, while diamonds have very high *exchange value* since people will pay high prices for them, even though they're certainly not life-critical.



wat0n wrote:
And then, what can you conclude from this example given that people are not willing to pay an infinite amount of money for water?



You tell me.


---


wat0n wrote:
When introducing an example to illustrate exploitation, you are assuming workers can be easily credited for generating (say) $40 in revenue/unit. But what happens with those workers who do not generate directly, but do so indirectly by (internally) providing services that allow the company to function at all?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Services like transportation do not produce commodities for the company. Wage laborers *do* produce commodities for the company.



wat0n wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Marxism *notes* the capitalist boom-and-bust cycle.



wat0n wrote:
Macroeconomic fluctuations are far from being the only market "failure" (technically, they are not even market failures). Here I'm thinking about concepts like adverse selection, information asymmetry, externalities, etc all of which were not deeply thought about by anyone during the 19th century.



---


wat0n wrote:
Likewise, some of the key Marxian predictions didn't quite pan out that way.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Vague.



wat0n wrote:
Did the revolution begin in England?



Did it?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, again, please provide some kind of *source* for your historical contentions.



wat0n wrote:
Which of all? The Marxian view of history (e.g. as explained in The Communist Manifesto) or that the candidates for a successful revolution were not in fact industrialized, counter to his vision of history?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Surprise me.



wat0n wrote:
Isn't section I. basically a an example of stagism?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... ifesto.pdf



England and the European countries had *already* had bourgeois revolutions (England, America, France), so the question of 'stagism' was for the *remainder* of the world, still within *feudal* relations, particularly Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungaria, and Japan -- and hence World War I.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, no shit -- the U.S. was the luckiest country *ever*. Not so much anymore, as evidenced by the Trump presidency.

It *became* an empire, though, in 1898.



wat0n wrote:
It was already industrialized by 1898 - I would say that the empire was actually a consequence rather than a cause of industrialization. And honestly, people like Buchanan were much, much worse than Trump.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Empire' implies *acquisition of foreign territory*:



wat0n wrote:
Right, and the US had already industrialized by then.



Why are you conflating 'industrialization', with 'empire' -- ? The U.S. picked a fight with Spain, and then took over their foreign possessions (Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam) in 1898.


---


wat0n wrote:
Right, but labor is cheaper for some tasks only - which is why there is an ongoing process of automation. It's also why I'm saying it depends on technological development, mainly.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, but I'm trying to indicate that the *social relations* of a mode-of-production (capitalism) can *fetter* that seemingly-juggernaut-like advance of technological progress -- for example, we still have *feudal-like* *property* relations -- rentier capital -- for the capitalist-mode-of-production-sake of *defining private property parcels*, like one lot from the next, and so rentier capital, in particular, is *non-productive* of commodities, yet continues to be rewarded, feudal-like, with interest and rent payments, from pre-existing value, just for existing. Shouldn't *rentier capital* have somehow been 'automated' by now?



wat0n wrote:
How can you do that? I would need you to elaborate. It seems to me that's because technology hasn't advanced all that much as to be able to create land cheaply, with all the properties that come with it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Exactly -- you're making my point *for* me here -- despite vaunting technological progress there still exists feudal-like, non-productive *rentier capital*, that *cannot* be automated. It's a *fetter* on both equity capital *and* wages, yet it's still around.



wat0n wrote:
And that's an issue with the current state of technology - i.e. it can't be dealt with for now.



No, rentier capital is *not related to* technological progression -- it's been around since the times of feudalism, and it's still here now, meaning that it's an artifact of capitalist *social relations*, and is not related to technological progress.

Labor is *required* to service this non-productive feudal-like rentier capital (landlord business offices, banking roles, government oversight, etc.), yet such labor does not produce any commodities, or new value -- it *consumes* *existing* values. Again, this has *nothing* to do with technology.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Trotskyism basically *internationalized* the implementation of socialist revolution, by saying that not each and every country has to go through its own stagist process of bourgeois revolution and capitalist development of infrastructure -- with enough international revolutionary area and momentum those areas that come under workers control can *lift up* those other areas of the world in revolution, but which may have not yet revolutionized / industrialized their own areas yet.



wat0n wrote:
OK, but why does it make him more leftist than Marx?



Well, Marx didn't address this aspect of revolutionary politics, regarding 'stagism', to my knowledge.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, I don't advocate such, anyway, for the reasons I've already given, plus I'm not an anarchist. I advocate an expanding workers state, worldwide, that is formidable enough to repress and overthrow the world's bourgeoisie.



wat0n wrote:
Yes, a global Stalinist state basically.



No, it wouldn't be Stalinism because it wouldn't be for the sake of nationalist consolidation, as Stalin did, for the sake of catch-up *industrialization* there -- it would be a formalist *formality*, to *formalize* the mass revolutionary, insurrectionary bottom-up political sentiment from below, for the world's working class to take power over industrial mass production.

The vanguard can't *substitute* for mass revolutionary sentiment because it's a relatively *tiny* organization that has no power or authority of its own. Either a sufficiently militant proletarian movement exists on-the-ground, or else it *doesn't*.


---


wat0n wrote:
So would you say it had fulfilled its stated goal of wiping the capitalists out, thereby making those extreme levels of centralization unjustifiable?



ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, since I'm not a Stalinist.



wat0n wrote:
So?



So I'm the wrong person to ask for a value-judgment regarding Stalinist historical developments. Try asking a Stalinist ('Marxist-Leninist'), perhaps.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yet that's arguably the best that the investors have -- professional management of capital, or else they have to do the research / work themselves.

My point stands that the professional management of pooled capital would be sufficient for the continuation of capitalism, *without* profits to ownership, so that surplus labor value can go to the wage workers themselves.



wat0n wrote:
I don't think so, because a professional manager is basically being paid to do her job - without really risking her wealth in the process of investing.



Exactly -- *others* are relying on that professional role with *their* money. It's not some game-theory ideal of gritty, autonomous agents all navigating the financial investment risk space on their own, with the cleverest, hardiest 'winners' prevailing and getting the best returns from a glistening 'meritocracy' of individual investment choices.

My point stands that capital ownership should not be rewarded with surplus labor value from the efforts of commodity-producing workers, because ownership is normally just *outsourcing* the investment role / function, to professional management, which is just a salaried position anyway.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're missing the point -- workers-of-the-world socialism *doesn't require* exchange values whatsoever. I just outlined, from my model, how organic mass demand could be ascertained over any given locality, or larger geographic area, simply by mass-aggregating individually ranked 'demands' lists (shopping lists) on a daily basis, by rank position (#1, #2, #3, etc.). This information would be publicly available and would be the empirical impetus to emergent 'social organization', for production, for liberated-labor, post-capitalism.



wat0n wrote:
I know that, but by virtue of being decentralized the price system can accomplish the same sort of outcome, but even more efficiently.



Wrong. You *admitted* that profit-making is a *cost*, and that's the cost of retaining private property for the function of the capitalist pricing regime, through the market mechanism.

By *eliminating* the market mechanism / pricing regime, we also eliminate the cost of private profits, which are a *tacked-on* cost to the production of anything, because of honoring private property ownership.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Since productive machinery (factories) is held *privately*, those private-property owners add a profit 'markup' to the cost / price that they charge for producing consumer commodities -- things that people *need* for modern life and living.

I already described how ownership could simply be absorbed into the corporate pools of capital under professional financial management, so that the cost of profits could be *eliminated*, and so that wage workers could receive the hourly surplus labor value that they should be getting anyway.



wat0n wrote:
I understand that you mean that by the "cost of profit". This still doesn't quite deal with the costs of risk the capitalist is taking on.



Sure, well, that's *another* problem with the market approach to the allocation-and-distribution of the resulting final products and services -- why should there be 'market risk' when we could far-more-easily just *survey* the economic landscape of organic mass demand, as with my 'individually-ranked daily demands lists', to formalize such mass demand *literally* -- ?

That way the system no longer requires *capital* for that allocation function -- we would already have the exact data regarding demand, from consumers themselves, and could work-backward to ramp-up production to fulfill that specific landscape of material (and socio-political) demands.
#15136578
ckaihatsu wrote:No, it's Maduro's *elected presidency*. Also, it's had to recently fend-off a coup attempt from the U.S. -- a counterrevolution -- so that has to be factored-in as well.


No, the Constituent Assembly was set up before any relevant American sanctions and the election was done after the removal of all relevant opposition candidates.

Even worse, this does not negate the fact that the Assembly is above Maduro himself and all other branches of government. That's something Maduro himself has acknowledged:



ckaihatsu wrote:No, it's up to the *states*, on a state-by-state basis, so the Supreme Court effectively selected the president *from above*, like the clergy crowning Napoleon.


Wrong again, there is a hard deadline for the Electoral College to meet and vote, which implies vote counting cannot go on forever.

ckaihatsu wrote:And just what *labor tactics* is allowed to labor and its collective bargaining, according to you? Work-to-rule? Strikes? Sit-downs?


Those are allowable, yes.

ckaihatsu wrote:I was asking you about *coups* from the U.S., which don't fit into your tidy little world of your imagining in which all politics is outlined by bourgeois *law*.


And I already gave my response: I don't like dictatorships.

Although it should be noted, too, that the coups you are thinking about were usually conducted by forces inside these countries and either with American support or acquiescence. They weren't actually conducted by the US.

ckaihatsu wrote:The quintessential Latin America dictator is *Batista*, and no, I wouldn't support dictators.


Clearly not true given your support for the Venezuelan regime.

ckaihatsu wrote:No, just recounting the most relevant facts of history. (Really.)


Clearly not given your genocide denial.

ckaihatsu wrote:Ireland *should have* independence:


I can see you did not deny my point. Good.

ckaihatsu wrote:I just *told* you -- under capitalist private-property-relations automation of mechanical production processes *concentrates* control of production into ever-*fewer* hands. Look at the current financial trend of stock *buybacks*, which concentrates ownership for the sake of increased internal valuations, to counter deflationary trends.


So?

ckaihatsu wrote:We've been going in circles several times now -- you want to insist on an 'indirect' route to revenue, by *non-productive* labor, but you're really just making shit up so as to avoid acknowledging that it's *wage labor* that *actually* produces commodities, which the company benefits from.


I'm not "making shit up". Good luck managing a bank without having any IT Department in 2020 :lol:

ckaihatsu wrote:You tell me.


I would say no, they are not. Right now I am not willing to pay an infinite amount for a glass of water.

ckaihatsu wrote:Did it?


No. Hell, we're still waiting in 2020 :D

ckaihatsu wrote:England and the European countries had *already* had bourgeois revolutions (England, America, France), so the question of 'stagism' was for the *remainder* of the world, still within *feudal* relations, particularly Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungaria, and Japan -- and hence World War I.


So?

ckaihatsu wrote:Why are you conflating 'industrialization', with 'empire' -- ? The U.S. picked a fight with Spain, and then took over their foreign possessions (Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam) in 1898.


I'm not. What I'm saying is that industrialization enabled the empire. Such a feat would have never been possible without industrializing first.

That means, then, that in the US industrialization happened first.

ckaihatsu wrote:No, rentier capital is *not related to* technological progression -- it's been around since the times of feudalism, and it's still here now, meaning that it's an artifact of capitalist *social relations*, and is not related to technological progress.


It is, because we depend on a fixed asset (land) to operate. If technological development allowed us to increase the supply of land, or rely less on it, then the role of rentier capital will decrease.

ckaihatsu wrote:Labor is *required* to service this non-productive feudal-like rentier capital (landlord business offices, banking roles, government oversight, etc.), yet such labor does not produce any commodities, or new value -- it *consumes* *existing* values. Again, this has *nothing* to do with technology.


Pretty odd to see the role of government oversight or management as adding no value. I'm guessing, then, that humanities don't add any value in your view either.

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, Marx didn't address this aspect of revolutionary politics, regarding 'stagism', to my knowledge.


So being a leftist is mostly about how revolutionary one is?

ckaihatsu wrote:No, it wouldn't be Stalinism because it wouldn't be for the sake of nationalist consolidation, as Stalin did, for the sake of catch-up *industrialization* there -- it would be a formalist *formality*, to *formalize* the mass revolutionary, insurrectionary bottom-up political sentiment from below, for the world's working class to take power over industrial mass production.

The vanguard can't *substitute* for mass revolutionary sentiment because it's a relatively *tiny* organization that has no power or authority of its own. Either a sufficiently militant proletarian movement exists on-the-ground, or else it *doesn't*.


Nationalist consolidation would be unnecessary under a world government, sure, but besides that it would be basically Stalinism.

ckaihatsu wrote:So I'm the wrong person to ask for a value-judgment regarding Stalinist historical developments. Try asking a Stalinist ('Marxist-Leninist'), perhaps.


Is this really a value judgment? Either the bourgeoisie has been usurped or it has not. If it has, then either the measures required to start the next stage begins are taken (including doing away with war communism) or they don't.

ckaihatsu wrote:Exactly -- *others* are relying on that professional role with *their* money. It's not some game-theory ideal of gritty, autonomous agents all navigating the financial investment risk space on their own, with the cleverest, hardiest 'winners' prevailing and getting the best returns from a glistening 'meritocracy' of individual investment choices.

My point stands that capital ownership should not be rewarded with surplus labor value from the efforts of commodity-producing workers, because ownership is normally just *outsourcing* the investment role / function, to professional management, which is just a salaried position anyway.


And yet those professional managers are not risking their own assets in doing their job. That's something only the capitalist is doing - and thus justifies a return.

ckaihatsu wrote:Wrong. You *admitted* that profit-making is a *cost*, and that's the cost of retaining private property for the function of the capitalist pricing regime, through the market mechanism.

By *eliminating* the market mechanism / pricing regime, we also eliminate the cost of private profits, which are a *tacked-on* cost to the production of anything, because of honoring private property ownership.


And you now lead to new, even greater costs in the form of transaction costs. That's my point.

Also, it is possible to have markets without necessarily having profits. The profit motive is not about the use of markets since it can and does exist outside of market economies, really.

ckaihatsu wrote:Sure, well, that's *another* problem with the market approach to the allocation-and-distribution of the resulting final products and services -- why should there be 'market risk' when we could far-more-easily just *survey* the economic landscape of organic mass demand, as with my 'individually-ranked daily demands lists', to formalize such mass demand *literally* -- ?

That way the system no longer requires *capital* for that allocation function -- we would already have the exact data regarding demand, from consumers themselves, and could work-backward to ramp-up production to fulfill that specific landscape of material (and socio-political) demands.


It's not just about market risk, though.

For instance, if there is a natural disaster that destroys all capital, who loses most?
#15136696
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's Maduro's *elected presidency*. Also, it's had to recently fend-off a coup attempt from the U.S. -- a counterrevolution -- so that has to be factored-in as well.



wat0n wrote:
No, the Constituent Assembly was set up before any relevant American sanctions and the election was done after the removal of all relevant opposition candidates.

Even worse, this does not negate the fact that the Assembly is above Maduro himself and all other branches of government. That's something Maduro himself has acknowledged:



Aren't they doing new elections for the Assembly, or something?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's up to the *states*, on a state-by-state basis, so the Supreme Court effectively selected the president *from above*, like the clergy crowning Napoleon.



wat0n wrote:
Wrong again, there is a hard deadline for the Electoral College to meet and vote, which implies vote counting cannot go on forever.



But the SCOTUS arbitrarily *imposed* a deadline, cutting off recounts, in the 2000 election.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
And just what *labor tactics* is allowed to labor and its collective bargaining, according to you? Work-to-rule? Strikes? Sit-downs?



wat0n wrote:
Those are allowable, yes.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I was asking you about *coups* from the U.S., which don't fit into your tidy little world of your imagining in which all politics is outlined by bourgeois *law*.



wat0n wrote:
And I already gave my response: I don't like dictatorships.

Although it should be noted, too, that the coups you are thinking about were usually conducted by forces inside these countries and either with American support or acquiescence. They weren't actually conducted by the US.



That's called rule by *proxy*, or *puppet* governments. Why are you so nonchalant about the U.S. pulling the strings from *outside* of the colonized country -- ?

Don't you recognize international law?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The quintessential Latin America dictator is *Batista*, and no, I wouldn't support dictators.



wat0n wrote:
Clearly not true given your support for the Venezuelan regime.



Again, he was *elected*, and had to fend off a coup attempt from the U.S. I think he gets some *slack* for his country being under attack from without, by an imperialist power.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, just recounting the most relevant facts of history. (Really.)



wat0n wrote:
Clearly not given your genocide denial.



Why aren't you comparing the Holocaust to Holodomor? The two aren't even *comparable*, because the Nazis were *intentional* (genocide), and Stalin was *not trying* to cause famines.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Ireland *should have* independence:



wat0n wrote:
I can see you did not deny my point. Good.



I'm anti-imperialist, and that includes the British Empire.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I just *told* you -- under capitalist private-property-relations automation of mechanical production processes *concentrates* control of production into ever-*fewer* hands. Look at the current financial trend of stock *buybacks*, which concentrates ownership for the sake of increased internal valuations, to counter deflationary trends.



wat0n wrote:
So?



So if you don't see the increasing automation of industrial mass production, into increasingly-concentrated elitist private ownership as being a problem, then you're basically *pro-elitist* in allowing such emergent economic circumstances to prevail and reign.

If any given government *supports* such emergent pricing regimes, then that means bourgeois governments willfully support the economic status quo, such as the potato famine in Ireland due to England's *colonization* of Ireland over its agricultural and finished goods.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
We've been going in circles several times now -- you want to insist on an 'indirect' route to revenue, by *non-productive* labor, but you're really just making shit up so as to avoid acknowledging that it's *wage labor* that *actually* produces commodities, which the company benefits from.



wat0n wrote:
I'm not "making shit up". Good luck managing a bank without having any IT Department in 2020 :lol:



It's a matter of your *emphasis* -- you're focusing on the *wrong aspect*, because the *revenue* of the company is made by selling the products and services made by *wage* labor, which is exploited of its surplus labor value (expropriation / theft). You're focusing on an *aside*, which is non-productive labor that is necessary for the company's *internals*, but not for its profit-making.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The water-and-diamonds example contrasts the difference between capitalist *exchange values*, and consumer *use values*. Water has *infinite* use-value, since it's critical for biological life, while diamonds have very high *exchange value* since people will pay high prices for them, even though they're certainly not life-critical.



wat0n wrote:
And then, what can you conclude from this example given that people are not willing to pay an infinite amount of money for water?



ckaihatsu wrote:
You tell me.



wat0n wrote:
I would say no, they are not. Right now I am not willing to pay an infinite amount for a glass of water.



People would not typically choose to die of thirst, so if they were somehow being economically blackmailed, they would *have* to pay whatever they have for the sake of staying alive -- see people's *medical bills*, for example.


---


wat0n wrote:
Likewise, some of the key Marxian predictions didn't quite pan out that way.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Vague.



wat0n wrote:
Did the revolution begin in England?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Did it?



wat0n wrote:
No. Hell, we're still waiting in 2020 :D



You're making Marxism sound *passive*, by assuming that it's akin to *clinical science*, which typically *makes predictions* about the external physical world. Marxism, however, can be categorized as a *social science*, which means that it's about populations of *people*, and society in general. It *may* make predictions, but typically it's about describing *social conditions* accurately, so that people can make conclusions in *common* (science) based on shared conclusions about the empirical socio-political world.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show
Image



---


wat0n wrote:
Isn't section I. basically a an example of stagism?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... ifesto.pdf



ckaihatsu wrote:
England and the European countries had *already* had bourgeois revolutions (England, America, France), so the question of 'stagism' was for the *remainder* of the world, still within *feudal* relations, particularly Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungaria, and Japan -- and hence World War I.



wat0n wrote:
So?



So that was a *bottleneck* in history -- all major countries had to *industrialize*, and the Western merchant empires had a relatively easy transition to it because they were already extracting value from their colonies overseas. Those non-Western, still-industrializing, *lesser local empires* were still catching-up, and Russia and China in particular even successfully *nationalized* out of monarchical rule -- as England, America, and France had -- and were trying to *industrialize* to get out of feudal economic *relations* / feudalist economics. The Western countries *went to war* against these developing *rivals*, for geopolitical dominance and economic market share.

Germany, I'll note, had successfully industrialized in the 19th century, and was *already* a rival to the established Western powers, but the German Empire had not *democratized* into a republic, going into World War I. The German Empire was punished *heavily* by the Allies after WWI, and although the German Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Emperor Wilhelm II, its empire was later rebuilt by the Nazis, which fomented *genocide* during World War II.



The two-stage theory, or stagism, is a Marxist–Leninist political theory which argues that underdeveloped countries such as Tsarist Russia must first pass through a stage of capitalism via a bourgeois revolution before moving to a socialist stage.[1]

Stagism was applied to countries worldwide which had not passed through the capitalist stage. In the Soviet Union, the two-stage theory was opposed by the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution.

While the discussion on stagism focuses on the Russian Revolution, Maoist theories such as New Democracy tend to apply a two-stage theory to struggles elsewhere.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stage_theory



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why are you conflating 'industrialization', with 'empire' -- ? The U.S. picked a fight with Spain, and then took over their foreign possessions (Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam) in 1898.



wat0n wrote:
I'm not. What I'm saying is that industrialization enabled the empire. Such a feat would have never been possible without industrializing first.

That means, then, that in the US industrialization happened first.



Okay.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
despite vaunting technological progress there still exists feudal-like, non-productive *rentier capital*, that *cannot* be automated. It's a *fetter* on both equity capital *and* wages, yet it's still around.



wat0n wrote:
And that's an issue with the current state of technology - i.e. it can't be dealt with for now.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, rentier capital is *not related to* technological progression -- it's been around since the times of feudalism, and it's still here now, meaning that it's an artifact of capitalist *social relations*, and is not related to technological progress.



wat0n wrote:
It is, because we depend on a fixed asset (land) to operate. If technological development allowed us to increase the supply of land, or rely less on it, then the role of rentier capital will decrease.



Yes, that's exactly the point that I'm making -- you're acknowledging that the supply of land *cannot* be increased, thus rendering technological progress *irrelevant* to rentier capital (land, assets, cash).

Previously (above) you argued *the opposite*, that rentier capital is 'an issue with the current state of technology', but now you're saying 'technological development [does not] [allow] us to increase the supply of land'.

Likewise, any rentier-type *assets* are *pre-existing* -- rentier capital did *not* assist in making them, as commodities, as *equity* capital does, nor does rentier capital bring new *value* into existence, through activating wage-labor production, and exploiting it, as equity capital does.

My point stands that technological progress is *not related* to rentier capital.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Labor is *required* to service this non-productive feudal-like rentier capital (landlord business offices, banking roles, government oversight, etc.), yet such labor does not produce any commodities, or new value -- it *consumes* *existing* values. Again, this has *nothing* to do with technology.



wat0n wrote:
Pretty odd to see the role of government oversight or management as adding no value. I'm guessing, then, that humanities don't add any value in your view either.



Humanities in *what sense*, do you mean?

Government oversight is *administrative*, part of society's *superstructure*, and is *not productive* -- it does not produce any commodities, and is an overhead *cost* to society.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, Marx didn't address this aspect of revolutionary politics, regarding 'stagism', to my knowledge.



wat0n wrote:
So being a leftist is mostly about how revolutionary one is?



I'd say that being a *revolutionary* is mostly about how revolutionary one is -- regarding *leftism*, *in general*, I have a treatment for that, in the form of a diagram / illustration:


Leftism -- Want, Get

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it wouldn't be Stalinism because it wouldn't be for the sake of nationalist consolidation, as Stalin did, for the sake of catch-up *industrialization* there -- it would be a formalist *formality*, to *formalize* the mass revolutionary, insurrectionary bottom-up political sentiment from below, for the world's working class to take power over industrial mass production.

The vanguard can't *substitute* for mass revolutionary sentiment because it's a relatively *tiny* organization that has no power or authority of its own. Either a sufficiently militant proletarian movement exists on-the-ground, or else it *doesn't*.



wat0n wrote:
Nationalist consolidation would be unnecessary under a world government, sure, but besides that it would be basically Stalinism.



Well, that's a *huge* difference -- you're implying *bureaucratic elitism* either way, but a vanguard *wouldn't* be a nationalist bureaucracy, as what existed during Stalinism. Again, it couldn't *substitute* for that which it's based on, that being a worldwide workers revolutionary movement, on the ground, to overthrow all the bosses and politicians -- the bourgeoisie. Without a conscious, mass, intentional workers militant movement leading into the formation of a *workers state*, any self-proclaimed 'workers vanguard' would have no *base* in actual class struggles, and could not 'direct' anything because there'd be nothing to 'direct'. It's really a *workers* organ, from the bottom-up, for the sake of dynamically *coordinating* various international struggles, only after such struggles actually *exist* to begin-with. (I'll remind that the *bourgeoisie* has *its* international bodies of international coordination, such as the United Nations, etc., which certainly don't represent *working class* interests anywhere.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So I'm the wrong person to ask for a value-judgment regarding Stalinist historical developments. Try asking a Stalinist ('Marxist-Leninist'), perhaps.



wat0n wrote:
Is this really a value judgment? Either the bourgeoisie has been usurped or it has not. If it has, then either the measures required to start the next stage begins are taken (including doing away with war communism) or they don't.



It sounds like you have enough leading info to find your own answers for this one.


---


wat0n wrote:
I don't think so, because a professional manager is basically being paid to do her job - without really risking her wealth in the process of investing.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Exactly -- *others* are relying on that professional role with *their* money. It's not some game-theory ideal of gritty, autonomous agents all navigating the financial investment risk space on their own, with the cleverest, hardiest 'winners' prevailing and getting the best returns from a glistening 'meritocracy' of individual investment choices.

My point stands that capital ownership should not be rewarded with surplus labor value from the efforts of commodity-producing workers, because ownership is normally just *outsourcing* the investment role / function, to professional management, which is just a salaried position anyway.



wat0n wrote:
And yet those professional managers are not risking their own assets in doing their job. That's something only the capitalist is doing - and thus justifies a return.



No, you just said that the professional managers are *not* risking their own assets -- see above.

The capitalist owner is paying a fee to *offload risk* to the professional investment manager, for investment portfolio decisions that are *professional*. This means that the capitalist owner of those investments is not doing *any work*, not even white-collar, ownership-interest "work", much less the production of any actual goods or services (commodities), that *wage workers* do, while getting *exploited* for it.

So my point stands that ownership is doing *zero* work, and certainly no *commodity-productive* work, to justify its receipt of wage-workers surplus labor value, since wage workers are being *exploited* of it, for the sake of it being handed to *ownership*.

Capital equity ownership has *already* abdicated whatever nominal 'work' role it may have had, by offloading its portfolio management tasks to professional investment *management*. Private ownership is then merely a *formality*, with one person's name on it, or another, and should be treated as a simple white-collar role, *at most*, like most of the roles in the financial industry bureaucracy.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Wrong. You *admitted* that profit-making is a *cost*, and that's the cost of retaining private property for the function of the capitalist pricing regime, through the market mechanism.

By *eliminating* the market mechanism / pricing regime, we also eliminate the cost of private profits, which are a *tacked-on* cost to the production of anything, because of honoring private property ownership.



wat0n wrote:
And you now lead to new, even greater costs in the form of transaction costs. That's my point.



What 'transaction costs' -- ? You basically mean white-collar *financial* roles -- the financial bureaucracy. Those are salaried positions, and are an overhead cost to business that do not produce any commodities, revenue, or profits for ownership. Again, it's *professional management* of capital, for a fee, to offset market risk.


wat0n wrote:
Also, it is possible to have markets without necessarily having profits. The profit motive is not about the use of markets since it can and does exist outside of market economies, really.



Bullshit on the latter part. If we *remove* the profit-making -- as I've been outlining -- then all financial activity takes place bureaucratically, as it does anyway, without ripping off labor of its surplus labor value, and without rewarding profits to private ownership. Capital ownership could then be treated more like a *civic duty*, for those who happen to own capital, or they may *give up* that role if they like and let *someone else* own the capital, and let someone else (a professional portfolio manager) *manage* the capital.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, well, that's *another* problem with the market approach to the allocation-and-distribution of the resulting final products and services -- why should there be 'market risk' when we could far-more-easily just *survey* the economic landscape of organic mass demand, as with my 'individually-ranked daily demands lists', to formalize such mass demand *literally* -- ?

That way the system no longer requires *capital* for that allocation function -- we would already have the exact data regarding demand, from consumers themselves, and could work-backward to ramp-up production to fulfill that specific landscape of material (and socio-political) demands.



wat0n wrote:
It's not just about market risk, though.

For instance, if there is a natural disaster that destroys all capital, who loses most?



Okay, you got me -- who loses most?
#15136706
wat0n wrote:
And yet those professional managers are not risking their own assets in doing their job. That's something only the capitalist is doing - and thus justifies a return.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, you just said that the professional managers are *not* risking their own assets -- see above.



CORRECTION:

Never mind -- I misread.
#15139510
ckaihatsu wrote:Aren't they doing new elections for the Assembly, or something?


The National Assembly, not the Constituent one as far as I'm aware. This does not change the fact that it has an absurd amount of power, incompatible with a democracy. Democracy is not voting for a dictator every few years.

ckaihatsu wrote:But the SCOTUS arbitrarily *imposed* a deadline, cutting off recounts, in the 2000 election.


One necessary for the EC to meet. Besides, the Republicans were still winning in the recount in FL I think.

ckaihatsu wrote:That's called rule by *proxy*, or *puppet* governments. Why are you so nonchalant about the U.S. pulling the strings from *outside* of the colonized country -- ?

Don't you recognize international law?


They weren't puppet governments either. There is a reason why Pinochet had no qualms to order the assassination of a guy who had been granted asylum by the US Government (Orlando Letelier along with his American secretary) in the streets of Washington, DC with a car bomb and then refused to cooperate with the American attempts to investigate.

Puppets do not do that kind of stuff.

ckaihatsu wrote:Again, he was *elected*, and had to fend off a coup attempt from the U.S. I think he gets some *slack* for his country being under attack from without, by an imperialist power.


Why not give Stalin the same sort of slack? :eh:

And as importantly: The decision to be in bad terms with the US was a Venezuelan one for the most part. I highly doubt the Americans would give a crap about Venezuela otherwise.

ckaihatsu wrote:Why aren't you comparing the Holocaust to Holodomor? The two aren't even *comparable*, because the Nazis were *intentional* (genocide), and Stalin was *not trying* to cause famines.


So Stalin was so incompetent that it just happened... Like in Ireland in 1846?

ckaihatsu wrote:I'm anti-imperialist, and that includes the British Empire.


And the Soviet Empire too, does it?

ckaihatsu wrote:So if you don't see the increasing automation of industrial mass production, into increasingly-concentrated elitist private ownership as being a problem, then you're basically *pro-elitist* in allowing such emergent economic circumstances to prevail and reign.

If any given government *supports* such emergent pricing regimes, then that means bourgeois governments willfully support the economic status quo, such as the potato famine in Ireland due to England's *colonization* of Ireland over its agricultural and finished goods.


It may be a problem indeed, but it doesn't seem to be stopping the ongoing process of automation.

I also don't see how concentrating everything in the hands of the State would solve it.

ckaihatsu wrote:It's a matter of your *emphasis* -- you're focusing on the *wrong aspect*, because the *revenue* of the company is made by selling the products and services made by *wage* labor, which is exploited of its surplus labor value (expropriation / theft). You're focusing on an *aside*, which is non-productive labor that is necessary for the company's *internals*, but not for its profit-making.


And you are ignoring the fact that this "non-productive labor" is in fact often necessary to produce at all, and therefore make profits. As such, ignoring its contribution in any analysis would be rather misleading.

ckaihatsu wrote:People would not typically choose to die of thirst, so if they were somehow being economically blackmailed, they would *have* to pay whatever they have for the sake of staying alive -- see people's *medical bills*, for example.


Sure, this is consistent with a Subjective Theory of Value. It is definitely at odds with the Labor Theory of Value though.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're making Marxism sound *passive*, by assuming that it's akin to *clinical science*, which typically *makes predictions* about the external physical world. Marxism, however, can be categorized as a *social science*, which means that it's about populations of *people*, and society in general. It *may* make predictions, but typically it's about describing *social conditions* accurately, so that people can make conclusions in *common* (science) based on shared conclusions about the empirical socio-political world.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show
Image


Indeed, this is true yet it doesn't quite negate what I said does it?

ckaihatsu wrote:So that was a *bottleneck* in history -- all major countries had to *industrialize*, and the Western merchant empires had a relatively easy transition to it because they were already extracting value from their colonies overseas. Those non-Western, still-industrializing, *lesser local empires* were still catching-up, and Russia and China in particular even successfully *nationalized* out of monarchical rule -- as England, America, and France had -- and were trying to *industrialize* to get out of feudal economic *relations* / feudalist economics. The Western countries *went to war* against these developing *rivals*, for geopolitical dominance and economic market share.

Germany, I'll note, had successfully industrialized in the 19th century, and was *already* a rival to the established Western powers, but the German Empire had not *democratized* into a republic, going into World War I. The German Empire was punished *heavily* by the Allies after WWI, and although the German Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Emperor Wilhelm II, its empire was later rebuilt by the Nazis, which fomented *genocide* during World War II.


ckaihatsu wrote:Okay.


I think the Western European case is just one of many examples of industrialization. The US is quite a counterexample since, as I said (and I think you don't disagree with the facts here), it industrialized before getting serious about owning colonies. Of course, you could say that this is because the US didn't really need to do so since the US is a large country rich on natural resources and was even more so in the 19th century.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yes, that's exactly the point that I'm making -- you're acknowledging that the supply of land *cannot* be increased, thus rendering technological progress *irrelevant* to rentier capital (land, assets, cash).

Previously (above) you argued *the opposite*, that rentier capital is 'an issue with the current state of technology', but now you're saying 'technological development [does not] [allow] us to increase the supply of land'.

Likewise, any rentier-type *assets* are *pre-existing* -- rentier capital did *not* assist in making them, as commodities, as *equity* capital does, nor does rentier capital bring new *value* into existence, through activating wage-labor production, and exploiting it, as equity capital does.

My point stands that technological progress is *not related* to rentier capital.


The bolded part is where you are wrong: Rentier capital may be rendered less profitable by technological progress if it becomes less necessary to produce. The most obvious example is land - maybe there will be some point in history that will enable us to be able to do away with land relatively cheaply be it by creating artificial land or by expanding onto other planets.

ckaihatsu wrote:Humanities in *what sense*, do you mean?


The usual one.

ckaihatsu wrote:Government oversight is *administrative*, part of society's *superstructure*, and is *not productive* -- it does not produce any commodities, and is an overhead *cost* to society.


I don't actually agree here. Having good laws, good policies, a fast bureaucracy and so on - good and effective government basically -, most definitely add value to society.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'd say that being a *revolutionary* is mostly about how revolutionary one is -- regarding *leftism*, *in general*, I have a treatment for that, in the form of a diagram / illustration:


Leftism -- Want, Get

Spoiler: show
Image


Would you explain it?

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, that's a *huge* difference -- you're implying *bureaucratic elitism* either way, but a vanguard *wouldn't* be a nationalist bureaucracy, as what existed during Stalinism. Again, it couldn't *substitute* for that which it's based on, that being a worldwide workers revolutionary movement, on the ground, to overthrow all the bosses and politicians -- the bourgeoisie. Without a conscious, mass, intentional workers militant movement leading into the formation of a *workers state*, any self-proclaimed 'workers vanguard' would have no *base* in actual class struggles, and could not 'direct' anything because there'd be nothing to 'direct'. It's really a *workers* organ, from the bottom-up, for the sake of dynamically *coordinating* various international struggles, only after such struggles actually *exist* to begin-with. (I'll remind that the *bourgeoisie* has *its* international bodies of international coordination, such as the United Nations, etc., which certainly don't represent *working class* interests anywhere.)


I don't really think so. The UN, as you mentioned, is also an elitist bureaucratic institution (which is not a bad thing per se). I don't see why would that change if it became an actual world government at some point, even if it were socialist or communist.

ckaihatsu wrote:It sounds like you have enough leading info to find your own answers for this one.


I actually think it was, since the elites that were formed afterwards were not really bourgeois - unless you want to stretch the meaning of the term.

ckaihatsu wrote:No, you just said that the professional managers are *not* risking their own assets -- see above.

The capitalist owner is paying a fee to *offload risk* to the professional investment manager, for investment portfolio decisions that are *professional*. This means that the capitalist owner of those investments is not doing *any work*, not even white-collar, ownership-interest "work", much less the production of any actual goods or services (commodities), that *wage workers* do, while getting *exploited* for it.

So my point stands that ownership is doing *zero* work, and certainly no *commodity-productive* work, to justify its receipt of wage-workers surplus labor value, since wage workers are being *exploited* of it, for the sake of it being handed to *ownership*.

Capital equity ownership has *already* abdicated whatever nominal 'work' role it may have had, by offloading its portfolio management tasks to professional investment *management*. Private ownership is then merely a *formality*, with one person's name on it, or another, and should be treated as a simple white-collar role, *at most*, like most of the roles in the financial industry bureaucracy.


I don't mean just the risk of mismanaging your own capital. I also mean e.g. systemic risk and other risks that cannot be easily hedged against by just good financial management.

And of course, the petit bourgeoisie doesn't quite have the same access to these services and the ability to hedge in general.

ckaihatsu wrote:What 'transaction costs' -- ? You basically mean white-collar *financial* roles -- the financial bureaucracy. Those are salaried positions, and are an overhead cost to business that do not produce any commodities, revenue, or profits for ownership. Again, it's *professional management* of capital, for a fee, to offset market risk.


Transaction costs are simply the costs of trading, in the broadest sense of the term.

ckaihatsu wrote:Bullshit on the latter part. If we *remove* the profit-making -- as I've been outlining -- then all financial activity takes place bureaucratically, as it does anyway, without ripping off labor of its surplus labor value, and without rewarding profits to private ownership. Capital ownership could then be treated more like a *civic duty*, for those who happen to own capital, or they may *give up* that role if they like and let *someone else* own the capital, and let someone else (a professional portfolio manager) *manage* the capital.


So non-profits don't participate in markets in your view? You'd be dead wrong.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, you got me -- who loses most?


Whoever owned it, namely, the capitalist of course.
#15139626
ckaihatsu wrote:
Aren't they doing new elections for the Assembly, or something?



wat0n wrote:
The National Assembly, not the Constituent one as far as I'm aware. This does not change the fact that it has an absurd amount of power, incompatible with a democracy. Democracy is not voting for a dictator every few years.



Perhaps democracy is more like voting for a new National Assembly.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
But the SCOTUS arbitrarily *imposed* a deadline, cutting off recounts, in the 2000 election.



wat0n wrote:
One necessary for the EC to meet. Besides, the Republicans were still winning in the recount in FL I think.



So if the cutoff was imposed *arbitrarily*, that favored the Republican Party at that point in the recount, then how is that in the spirit of democracy?

The 2000 election was statistically comparable to a coin-flip.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I was asking you about *coups* from the U.S., which don't fit into your tidy little world of your imagining in which all politics is outlined by bourgeois *law*.



wat0n wrote:
And I already gave my response: I don't like dictatorships.

Although it should be noted, too, that the coups you are thinking about were usually conducted by forces inside these countries and either with American support or acquiescence. They weren't actually conducted by the US.



ckaihatsu wrote:
That's called rule by *proxy*, or *puppet* governments. Why are you so nonchalant about the U.S. pulling the strings from *outside* of the colonized country -- ?

Don't you recognize international law?



wat0n wrote:
They weren't puppet governments either. There is a reason why Pinochet had no qualms to order the assassination of a guy who had been granted asylum by the US Government (Orlando Letelier along with his American secretary) in the streets of Washington, DC with a car bomb and then refused to cooperate with the American attempts to investigate.

Puppets do not do that kind of stuff.



Okay, Pinochet wasn't a *puppet* as much as he was a *collaborator*:



[T]he CIA was crucial to the consolidation of power after the coup; the CIA helped fabricate a conspiracy against the Allende government, which Pinochet was then portrayed as preventing. He stated that the coup itself was possible only through a three-year covert operation mounted by the United States.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_P ... f_the_coup



A more-'puppet' example would be Uribe, in Colombia, regarding AUC operations, tied in with Plan Colombia with the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#Financing


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The quintessential Latin America dictator is *Batista*, and no, I wouldn't support dictators.



wat0n wrote:
Clearly not true given your support for the Venezuelan regime.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, he was *elected*, and had to fend off a coup attempt from the U.S. I think he gets some *slack* for his country being under attack from without, by an imperialist power.



wat0n wrote:
Why not give Stalin the same sort of slack? :eh:



Yes, good point -- I *do*, because of the imperialist military invasion that preceded Stalin, and then also the country's critical need to *industrialize* despite the West's interference.

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


wat0n wrote:
And as importantly: The decision to be in bad terms with the US was a Venezuelan one for the most part. I highly doubt the Americans would give a crap about Venezuela otherwise.



This is *vague* -- what (joint) decision, purportedly made in 'bad terms' with the U.S. are you *referring* to, exactly?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why aren't you comparing the Holocaust to Holodomor? The two aren't even *comparable*, because the Nazis were *intentional* (genocide), and Stalin was *not trying* to cause famines.



wat0n wrote:
So Stalin was so incompetent that it just happened... Like in Ireland in 1846?



You're not defending your point about Holodomor, and you're not acknowledging Nazi aggression (to put it lightly) in the Holocaust -- and now you're comparing Stalin's hastened-industrialization-under-duress to Britain's *food profiteering* for profits that caused the potato famine for the Irish -- ?

Do you really think that *jumping around* a lot makes for good politics?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm anti-imperialist, and that includes the British Empire.



wat0n wrote:
And the Soviet Empire too, does it?



There *was no* 'Soviet Empire' -- you're thinking of the 19th century *monarchical* Russian Empire:

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


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So if you don't see the increasing automation of industrial mass production, into increasingly-concentrated elitist private ownership as being a problem, then you're basically *pro-elitist* in allowing such emergent economic circumstances to prevail and reign.

If any given government *supports* such emergent pricing regimes, then that means bourgeois governments willfully support the economic status quo, such as the potato famine in Ireland due to England's *colonization* of Ireland over its agricultural and finished goods.



wat0n wrote:
It may be a problem indeed, but it doesn't seem to be stopping the ongoing process of automation.

I also don't see how concentrating everything in the hands of the State would solve it.



I don't either since I'm not a Stalinist. I call for the *workers of the world* to control all social production, including that of industrial mass production and any automation over the same.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's a matter of your *emphasis* -- you're focusing on the *wrong aspect*, because the *revenue* of the company is made by selling the products and services made by *wage* labor, which is exploited of its surplus labor value (expropriation / theft). You're focusing on an *aside*, which is non-productive labor that is necessary for the company's *internals*, but not for its profit-making.



wat0n wrote:
And you are ignoring the fact that this "non-productive labor" is in fact often necessary to produce at all, and therefore make profits. As such, ignoring its contribution in any analysis would be rather misleading.



It's *internal*, and it's *non-productive*.

Now what objection do you conceivably have?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
People would not typically choose to die of thirst, so if they were somehow being economically blackmailed, they would *have* to pay whatever they have for the sake of staying alive -- see people's *medical bills*, for example.



wat0n wrote:
Sure, this is consistent with a Subjective Theory of Value. It is definitely at odds with the Labor Theory of Value though.



How so?

You're *bullshitting*.


---


wat0n wrote:
Likewise, some of the key Marxian predictions didn't quite pan out that way.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Vague.



wat0n wrote:
Did the revolution begin in England?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Did it?



wat0n wrote:
No. Hell, we're still waiting in 2020 :D



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're making Marxism sound *passive*, by assuming that it's akin to *clinical science*, which typically *makes predictions* about the external physical world. Marxism, however, can be categorized as a *social science*, which means that it's about populations of *people*, and society in general. It *may* make predictions, but typically it's about describing *social conditions* accurately, so that people can make conclusions in *common* (science) based on shared conclusions about the empirical socio-political world.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Indeed, this is true yet it doesn't quite negate what I said does it?



I never *said* that 'The Revolution' -- whatever that is -- began in England.

And nothing about Marxism 'predicted' that a (worldwide) proletarian revolution would begin in England.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
England and the European countries had *already* had bourgeois revolutions (England, America, France), so the question of 'stagism' was for the *remainder* of the world, still within *feudal* relations, particularly Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungaria, and Japan -- and hence World War I.



wat0n wrote:
So?



ckaihatsu wrote:
So that was a *bottleneck* in history -- all major countries had to *industrialize*, and the Western merchant empires had a relatively easy transition to it because they were already extracting value from their colonies overseas. Those non-Western, still-industrializing, *lesser local empires* were still catching-up, and Russia and China in particular even successfully *nationalized* out of monarchical rule -- as England, America, and France had -- and were trying to *industrialize* to get out of feudal economic *relations* / feudalist economics. The Western countries *went to war* against these developing *rivals*, for geopolitical dominance and economic market share.

Germany, I'll note, had successfully industrialized in the 19th century, and was *already* a rival to the established Western powers, but the German Empire had not *democratized* into a republic, going into World War I. The German Empire was punished *heavily* by the Allies after WWI, and although the German Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Emperor Wilhelm II, its empire was later rebuilt by the Nazis, which fomented *genocide* during World War II.




The two-stage theory, or stagism, is a Marxist–Leninist political theory which argues that underdeveloped countries such as Tsarist Russia must first pass through a stage of capitalism via a bourgeois revolution before moving to a socialist stage.[1]

Stagism was applied to countries worldwide which had not passed through the capitalist stage. In the Soviet Union, the two-stage theory was opposed by the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution.

While the discussion on stagism focuses on the Russian Revolution, Maoist theories such as New Democracy tend to apply a two-stage theory to struggles elsewhere.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stage_theory



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why are you conflating 'industrialization', with 'empire' -- ? The U.S. picked a fight with Spain, and then took over their foreign possessions (Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam) in 1898.



wat0n wrote:
I'm not. What I'm saying is that industrialization enabled the empire. Such a feat would have never been possible without industrializing first.

That means, then, that in the US industrialization happened first.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay.



wat0n wrote:
I think the Western European case is just one of many examples of industrialization. The US is quite a counterexample since, as I said (and I think you don't disagree with the facts here), it industrialized before getting serious about owning colonies. Of course, you could say that this is because the US didn't really need to do so since the US is a large country rich on natural resources and was even more so in the 19th century.



I agree that European countries nationalized and became colonialist *before* they industrialized, while the U.S. *industrialized* before it became *imperialist*.

*Politically* the question for the rest of the world's countries was whether they would objectively have to have their *own* bourgeois revolutions, as the Western countries did, before then going on to *proletarian* revolutions of their own.

Stalinists say 'yes', and they subscribe to the 'two-stage' theory (above), while Trotskyists say 'no', and they subscribe to Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution' which basically says that the more revolutionarily-advanced areas can *pull up* those areas in revolution that are *less industrialized*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
despite vaunting technological progress there still exists feudal-like, non-productive *rentier capital*, that *cannot* be automated. It's a *fetter* on both equity capital *and* wages, yet it's still around.



wat0n wrote:
And that's an issue with the current state of technology - i.e. it can't be dealt with for now.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, rentier capital is *not related to* technological progression -- it's been around since the times of feudalism, and it's still here now, meaning that it's an artifact of capitalist *social relations*, and is not related to technological progress.



wat0n wrote:
It is, because we depend on a fixed asset (land) to operate. If technological development allowed us to increase the supply of land, or rely less on it, then the role of rentier capital will decrease.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, that's exactly the point that I'm making -- you're acknowledging that the supply of land *cannot* be increased, thus rendering technological progress *irrelevant* to rentier capital (land, assets, cash).

Previously (above) you argued *the opposite*, that rentier capital is 'an issue with the current state of technology', but now you're saying 'technological development [does not] [allow] us to increase the supply of land'.

Likewise, any rentier-type *assets* are *pre-existing* -- rentier capital did *not* assist in making them, as commodities, as *equity* capital does, nor does rentier capital bring new *value* into existence, through activating wage-labor production, and exploiting it, as equity capital does.

My point stands that technological progress is *not related* to rentier capital.



wat0n wrote:
The bolded part is where you are wrong: Rentier capital may be rendered less profitable by technological progress if it becomes less necessary to produce. The most obvious example is land - maybe there will be some point in history that will enable us to be able to do away with land relatively cheaply be it by creating artificial land or by expanding onto other planets.



In terms of *property relations*, though, how would such be *treated*, exactly -- would an artificial island or a platform in space be an *asset*, or would it be a *commodity* -- ?

Consider that 'real estate' came into existence through nation-states, through law, and so were pre-existing *free* natural 'assets', by parcel, while any *object* or *item* that we may construct *on* a parcel of land, like a house, is really more of a *commodity*. It can be bought-and-sold, used or left, or demolished, while the land itself does *not* leave. It is a rentier-capital-type *asset*, definitively.

Could I *own* an artificial island outright? Could I fully *dismantle* it and sell it for scrap? What if I *did* dismantle it -- assuming that it's a metallic platform of some kind -- would I be in *violation* of some law concerning *zoning* -- ?

If the artificial island is made from building up from the land *itself*, to make *more land*, I seriously doubt that so much of that kind of thing could be constructed to have an impact on the entire larger global real estate *market pricing*, as you're suggesting. In other words the *costs* would be so great that such an asset could never *recover* on the costs to *construct* it in the first place, much less *devalue* all land everywhere else by dint of its quantity.

And now we have a real-world precedent:


Why Dubai's Man-Made Islands Are Still Empty




---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Labor is *required* to service this non-productive feudal-like rentier capital (landlord business offices, banking roles, government oversight, etc.), yet such labor does not produce any commodities, or new value -- it *consumes* *existing* values. Again, this has *nothing* to do with technology.



wat0n wrote:
Pretty odd to see the role of government oversight or management as adding no value. I'm guessing, then, that humanities don't add any value in your view either.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Humanities in *what sense*, do you mean?



wat0n wrote:
The usual one.



I mean you need to specify a *scenario*, or example, because we're discussing within the context of *finance* and economics. Without a 'case study' the term 'humanities' is too *abstract* in relation to 'value'.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Government oversight is *administrative*, part of society's *superstructure*, and is *not productive* -- it does not produce any commodities, and is an overhead *cost* to society.



wat0n wrote:
I don't actually agree here. Having good laws, good policies, a fast bureaucracy and so on - good and effective government basically -, most definitely add value to society.



Okay, great, then who from 'government oversight' gives me a check?

What *you're* referring to is *state functions*, which are inherently *political*, since that's what government *is* -- a political institution in society, and so such has to inescapably be described *politically*, such as 'Whose interests does it serve?' 'What does good government look like versus what bad government looks like?', etc.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'd say that being a *revolutionary* is mostly about how revolutionary one is -- regarding *leftism*, *in general*, I have a treatment for that, in the form of a diagram / illustration:


Leftism -- Want, Get

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Would you explain it?



The way I handle this kind of request is to ask for some *specificity* on your part. What *about* it do you want explained, or what aspect of it isn't clear to you?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, that's a *huge* difference -- you're implying *bureaucratic elitism* either way, but a vanguard *wouldn't* be a nationalist bureaucracy, as what existed during Stalinism. Again, it couldn't *substitute* for that which it's based on, that being a worldwide workers revolutionary movement, on the ground, to overthrow all the bosses and politicians -- the bourgeoisie. Without a conscious, mass, intentional workers militant movement leading into the formation of a *workers state*, any self-proclaimed 'workers vanguard' would have no *base* in actual class struggles, and could not 'direct' anything because there'd be nothing to 'direct'. It's really a *workers* organ, from the bottom-up, for the sake of dynamically *coordinating* various international struggles, only after such struggles actually *exist* to begin-with. (I'll remind that the *bourgeoisie* has *its* international bodies of international coordination, such as the United Nations, etc., which certainly don't represent *working class* interests anywhere.)



wat0n wrote:
I don't really think so. The UN, as you mentioned, is also an elitist bureaucratic institution (which is not a bad thing per se). I don't see why would that change if it became an actual world government at some point, even if it were socialist or communist.



As I just mentioned, the United Nations is formed out of *bourgeois* governments. The workers of the world have *no* hand in how bourgeois governments function, including the formation and function of the United Nations.

The United Nations, and its constituent bourgeois governments, would not suddenly be on the side of the *workers*, to *oppose* the interests of the bourgeois governments that they represented on just the previous day. Remember that the interests of the bourgeoisie (through bourgeois governments) is to make as much *profit* as possible through the exploitation of labor, while labor has the interests of making as much *wages* as possible through their work, which necessarily deprives company ownership of greater profits, from that same labor process. A dollar that goes to profits cannot also go to wages.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It sounds like you have enough leading info to find your own answers for this one.



wat0n wrote:
I actually think it was, since the elites that were formed afterwards were not really bourgeois - unless you want to stretch the meaning of the term.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, you just said that the professional managers are *not* risking their own assets -- see above.

The capitalist owner is paying a fee to *offload risk* to the professional investment manager, for investment portfolio decisions that are *professional*. This means that the capitalist owner of those investments is not doing *any work*, not even white-collar, ownership-interest "work", much less the production of any actual goods or services (commodities), that *wage workers* do, while getting *exploited* for it.

So my point stands that ownership is doing *zero* work, and certainly no *commodity-productive* work, to justify its receipt of wage-workers surplus labor value, since wage workers are being *exploited* of it, for the sake of it being handed to *ownership*.

Capital equity ownership has *already* abdicated whatever nominal 'work' role it may have had, by offloading its portfolio management tasks to professional investment *management*. Private ownership is then merely a *formality*, with one person's name on it, or another, and should be treated as a simple white-collar role, *at most*, like most of the roles in the financial industry bureaucracy.



wat0n wrote:
I don't mean just the risk of mismanaging your own capital. I also mean e.g. systemic risk and other risks that cannot be easily hedged against by just good financial management.

And of course, the petit bourgeoisie doesn't quite have the same access to these services and the ability to hedge in general.



I mean the proposal *politically* -- meaning 'governance in the public interest', as with face-mask-wearing requirements to collectively displace the coronavirus.

Perhaps the perspective I've outlined would be generally seen as a *sound* one, that too much attention and activity on the part of many is focused on individually navigating the ups-and-downs of financial investments in the stock market, like individual vehicles on the roadways.

So, in line with reformist calls for a more robust public transportation system, the navigation of the stock market should be left to *professional investment managers*, while any commodity-productive wage work would *not* be deprived of its surplus labor value, for private profits and speculative profit-seeking in the stock markets, since the U.S. government had to *bail out* such private speculation -- bad debt -- with public funds, in the trillions of dollars, just this year, 2020.

Instead of punishing workers we should be *rewarding* them with the full labor value that they're creating, and punishing those who make their profits *from* wage laborers, since that money from worker-exploitation was used as *unsound investments*, and then was replaced with *public funds*, for the sake of saving the stock market.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Wrong. You *admitted* that profit-making is a *cost*, and that's the cost of retaining private property for the function of the capitalist pricing regime, through the market mechanism.

By *eliminating* the market mechanism / pricing regime, we also eliminate the cost of private profits, which are a *tacked-on* cost to the production of anything, because of honoring private property ownership.



wat0n wrote:
And you now lead to new, even greater costs in the form of transaction costs. That's my point.



ckaihatsu wrote:
What 'transaction costs' -- ? You basically mean white-collar *financial* roles -- the financial bureaucracy. Those are salaried positions, and are an overhead cost to business that do not produce any commodities, revenue, or profits for ownership. Again, it's *professional management* of capital, for a fee, to offset market risk.



wat0n wrote:
Transaction costs are simply the costs of trading, in the broadest sense of the term.



You're talking about 'expenses' related to the professional role of 'investment manager' -- researching companies, meeting with their executives, etc., right?

So all of that is *still* *overhead*, which is non-productive. The *productive* part is the *service* being provided to the clients, that of investment advice.

All of this financial activity could still take place, *without* incurring the cost of profits, while *reducing* transaction costs on the whole because such would be *professionalized*, instead of being navigated like so many individual drivers in individual cars on the road.

People wouldn't have to be *amateur* investment owners, or, conversely, *overextended* investment owners navigating the markets themselves, and wage workers wouldn't have to give up their surplus labor value for the sake of incurring the tacked-on charge of profit-making, profits which all-too-often get *thrown away*, becoming *bad debts* that the government then has to use *public funds* to cover afterwards, creating *zombie companies*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Bullshit on the latter part. If we *remove* the profit-making -- as I've been outlining -- then all financial activity takes place bureaucratically, as it does anyway, without ripping off labor of its surplus labor value, and without rewarding profits to private ownership. Capital ownership could then be treated more like a *civic duty*, for those who happen to own capital, or they may *give up* that role if they like and let *someone else* own the capital, and let someone else (a professional portfolio manager) *manage* the capital.



wat0n wrote:
So non-profits don't participate in markets in your view? You'd be dead wrong.



You're talking apples-and-oranges.

I wasn't describing non-profit organizations -- my proposal is about reducing transaction costs by *professionalizing* the economic role of financial decision-making, for *all investors*, into salaried positions. This approach is taking place every day anyway, and if this approach is *required* for all investors then wage workers wouldn't have to *give over* their surplus labor value, in the form of profits, to the companies they work for, to be *squandered*, then *bailed out* by government intervention in the markets.

In other words the value produced by work should *stay* with the workers themselves. Any investment (equity) capital that already exists should be managed for all investors *professionally*, by salaried employees.

In the following scenario the worker should get $20, not $10:



Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid $10 per hour. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can have him operate a boot-making machine with which the worker produces $10 worth of work every 15 minutes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of work and only pays the worker $10, capturing the remaining $30 as gross revenue. Once the capitalist has deducted fixed and variable operating costs of (say) $20 (leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.), he is left with $10. Thus, for an outlay of capital of $30, the capitalist obtains a surplus value of $10; his capital has not only been replaced by the operation, but also has increased by $10.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value#Theory



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, well, that's *another* problem with the market approach to the allocation-and-distribution of the resulting final products and services -- why should there be 'market risk' when we could far-more-easily just *survey* the economic landscape of organic mass demand, as with my 'individually-ranked daily demands lists', to formalize such mass demand *literally* -- ?

That way the system no longer requires *capital* for that allocation function -- we would already have the exact data regarding demand, from consumers themselves, and could work-backward to ramp-up production to fulfill that specific landscape of material (and socio-political) demands.



wat0n wrote:
It's not just about market risk, though.

For instance, if there is a natural disaster that destroys all capital, who loses most?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, you got me -- who loses most?



wat0n wrote:
Whoever owned it, namely, the capitalist of course.



You're saying that in a natural disaster *capitalists* lose the most? Who are you comparing the capitalists to, in this scenario? And what's the natural disaster, exactly?
#15139640
ckaihatsu wrote:Perhaps democracy is more like voting for a new National Assembly.


...That effectively has no legislative powers since those are in the hands of the Constituent Assembly :eh:

ckaihatsu wrote:So if the cutoff was imposed *arbitrarily*, that favored the Republican Party at that point in the recount, then how is that in the spirit of democracy?

The 2000 election was statistically comparable to a coin-flip.


It wasn't imposed arbitrarily, though. It was necessary to fulfill the Constitutional requirements of the Electoral College.

Even worse, the first count also placed Bush as winning Florida, and the recount was showing the same result...

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, Pinochet wasn't a *puppet* as much as he was a *collaborator*:


The Americans believed the military didn't really need any help to topple the government and that any toppling of it would need to be carried out by the military anyway, as such, the Nixon administration decided it was not worth getting involved in coup plotting as early as 1972.

Of course, this was not the result of some weird American aversion to be involved in carrying coups out against their enemies, one that was also absent among the Soviets. It was just a rather straightforward cost-benefit calculation and also learning the lessons from the failed Track II coup plot (yes, that was an actual plot which not only did not pan out, but the Americans' plan was not even implemented and they also learned that only the military can carry these out once there is a firm decision on their end).

ckaihatsu wrote:A more-'puppet' example would be Uribe, in Colombia, regarding AUC operations, tied in with Plan Colombia with the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#Financing


Maybe, I think we'll know in a few years just how much was the US involved in their defeat of the FARC.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yes, good point -- I *do*, because of the imperialist military invasion that preceded Stalin, and then also the country's critical need to *industrialize* despite the West's interference.

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


Fair, then you shouldn't complain about their decision to give up on world revolution at least at the time. It was, from their perspective, simply the most rational decision at the time to consolidate their regime.

ckaihatsu wrote:This is *vague* -- what (joint) decision, purportedly made in 'bad terms' with the U.S. are you *referring* to, exactly?


The decision to generally oppose US foreign policy of course. You don't seriously think the Americans care all that much about Venezuela, even more so when they were their main buyers of crude oil throughout the Chavez government did you? Their main goal regarding Venezuela (and Latin America more generally) is for them not be a pest to the US for the most part.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're not defending your point about Holodomor, and you're not acknowledging Nazi aggression (to put it lightly) in the Holocaust -- and now you're comparing Stalin's hastened-industrialization-under-duress to Britain's *food profiteering* for profits that caused the potato famine for the Irish -- ?

Do you really think that *jumping around* a lot makes for good politics?


I'm simply highlighting your double-standard here. Certainly the Holodomor was no industrialized extermination like the Holocaust was, but it does have a few parallels to the potato famine (which, by the way, had as its proximate cause a natural phenomenon - and if you don't like the British response to it, then you shouldn't like the Soviet response to the Holodomor either).

ckaihatsu wrote:There *was no* 'Soviet Empire' -- you're thinking of the 19th century *monarchical* Russian Empire:

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


No, I'm thinking of the Soviet Empire that was a contender in the Cold War. If the US is an Empire, so was the USSR from at least 1945 onwards.

ckaihatsu wrote:I don't either since I'm not a Stalinist. I call for the *workers of the world* to control all social production, including that of industrial mass production and any automation over the same.


Why would that incentivize investment in fixed capital?

ckaihatsu wrote:It's *internal*, and it's *non-productive*.

Now what objection do you conceivably have?


That doesn't really address my point. Just because they don't directly produce any goods, it doesn't mean they are not taking part in the productive process.

ckaihatsu wrote:How so?

You're *bullshitting*.


Really? So why would someone's thirst change the socially-necessary labor to provide others with water?

ckaihatsu wrote:I never *said* that 'The Revolution' -- whatever that is -- began in England.

And nothing about Marxism 'predicted' that a (worldwide) proletarian revolution would begin in England.


It was the most industrialized country in the world at the time. Of course it was reasonable to expect it to begin there, rather than the still industrializing Russia.

ckaihatsu wrote:I agree that European countries nationalized and became colonialist *before* they industrialized, while the U.S. *industrialized* before it became *imperialist*.

*Politically* the question for the rest of the world's countries was whether they would objectively have to have their *own* bourgeois revolutions, as the Western countries did, before then going on to *proletarian* revolutions of their own.

Stalinists say 'yes', and they subscribe to the 'two-stage' theory (above), while Trotskyists say 'no', and they subscribe to Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution' which basically says that the more revolutionarily-advanced areas can *pull up* those areas in revolution that are *less industrialized*.


Stalinists, though, never actually practiced what they preached in this regard. They seem to have wiped the bourgeoisie out first, and industrialized their countries themselves.

ckaihatsu wrote:In terms of *property relations*, though, how would such be *treated*, exactly -- would an artificial island or a platform in space be an *asset*, or would it be a *commodity* -- ?

Consider that 'real estate' came into existence through nation-states, through law, and so were pre-existing *free* natural 'assets', by parcel, while any *object* or *item* that we may construct *on* a parcel of land, like a house, is really more of a *commodity*. It can be bought-and-sold, used or left, or demolished, while the land itself does *not* leave. It is a rentier-capital-type *asset*, definitively.

Could I *own* an artificial island outright? Could I fully *dismantle* it and sell it for scrap? What if I *did* dismantle it -- assuming that it's a metallic platform of some kind -- would I be in *violation* of some law concerning *zoning* -- ?

If the artificial island is made from building up from the land *itself*, to make *more land*, I seriously doubt that so much of that kind of thing could be constructed to have an impact on the entire larger global real estate *market pricing*, as you're suggesting. In other words the *costs* would be so great that such an asset could never *recover* on the costs to *construct* it in the first place, much less *devalue* all land everywhere else by dint of its quantity.

And now we have a real-world precedent:


Why Dubai's Man-Made Islands Are Still Empty



That's why I'm saying we don't have the technology to do so, cheaply, for now. These islands, using your terminology (I would say a house built on land is also an asset, even a car is an asset - but whatever), would be a commodity.

ckaihatsu wrote:I mean you need to specify a *scenario*, or example, because we're discussing within the context of *finance* and economics. Without a 'case study' the term 'humanities' is too *abstract* in relation to 'value'.


Do the arts or philosophy add value to society? They often have little commercial profitability.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, great, then who from 'government oversight' gives me a check?

What *you're* referring to is *state functions*, which are inherently *political*, since that's what government *is* -- a political institution in society, and so such has to inescapably be described *politically*, such as 'Whose interests does it serve?' 'What does good government look like versus what bad government looks like?', etc.


But even then, a government that cannot (for instance) guarantee security or has a bureaucracy that is completely useless will be bad and unable to provide for anyone's interests.

ckaihatsu wrote:The way I handle this kind of request is to ask for some *specificity* on your part. What *about* it do you want explained, or what aspect of it isn't clear to you?


All of it, really. I'm guessing one doesn't always get what one wants... So?

ckaihatsu wrote:As I just mentioned, the United Nations is formed out of *bourgeois* governments. The workers of the world have *no* hand in how bourgeois governments function, including the formation and function of the United Nations.

The United Nations, and its constituent bourgeois governments, would not suddenly be on the side of the *workers*, to *oppose* the interests of the bourgeois governments that they represented on just the previous day. Remember that the interests of the bourgeoisie (through bourgeois governments) is to make as much *profit* as possible through the exploitation of labor, while labor has the interests of making as much *wages* as possible through their work, which necessarily deprives company ownership of greater profits, from that same labor process. A dollar that goes to profits cannot also go to wages.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image


My point is, even if it served workers it would still become an elitist bureaucratic institution.

ckaihatsu wrote:I mean the proposal *politically* -- meaning 'governance in the public interest', as with face-mask-wearing requirements to collectively displace the coronavirus.

Perhaps the perspective I've outlined would be generally seen as a *sound* one, that too much attention and activity on the part of many is focused on individually navigating the ups-and-downs of financial investments in the stock market, like individual vehicles on the roadways.

So, in line with reformist calls for a more robust public transportation system, the navigation of the stock market should be left to *professional investment managers*, while any commodity-productive wage work would *not* be deprived of its surplus labor value, for private profits and speculative profit-seeking in the stock markets, since the U.S. government had to *bail out* such private speculation -- bad debt -- with public funds, in the trillions of dollars, just this year, 2020.

Instead of punishing workers we should be *rewarding* them with the full labor value that they're creating, and punishing those who make their profits *from* wage laborers, since that money from worker-exploitation was used as *unsound investments*, and then was replaced with *public funds*, for the sake of saving the stock market.


I don't think this response really addresses my point. I'm not referring simply to stock market trouble - even a small business owner takes on risk by operating. And they don't trade their ownership in the stock markets.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're talking about 'expenses' related to the professional role of 'investment manager' -- researching companies, meeting with their executives, etc., right?

So all of that is *still* *overhead*, which is non-productive. The *productive* part is the *service* being provided to the clients, that of investment advice.

All of this financial activity could still take place, *without* incurring the cost of profits, while *reducing* transaction costs on the whole because such would be *professionalized*, instead of being navigated like so many individual drivers in individual cars on the road.

People wouldn't have to be *amateur* investment owners, or, conversely, *overextended* investment owners navigating the markets themselves, and wage workers wouldn't have to give up their surplus labor value for the sake of incurring the tacked-on charge of profit-making, profits which all-too-often get *thrown away*, becoming *bad debts* that the government then has to use *public funds* to cover afterwards, creating *zombie companies*.


No, I'm referring to something a lot broader than that. It is also costly to find clients to sell to, or to bargain in general.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're talking apples-and-oranges.

I wasn't describing non-profit organizations -- my proposal is about reducing transaction costs by *professionalizing* the economic role of financial decision-making, for *all investors*, into salaried positions. This approach is taking place every day anyway, and if this approach is *required* for all investors then wage workers wouldn't have to *give over* their surplus labor value, in the form of profits, to the companies they work for, to be *squandered*, then *bailed out* by government intervention in the markets.

In other words the value produced by work should *stay* with the workers themselves. Any investment (equity) capital that already exists should be managed for all investors *professionally*, by salaried employees.

In the following scenario the worker should get $20, not $10:


Not really, I'm simply showing a counter-example to your claim.

I don't think the rest of this point really negates what I said about i) transaction costs being more than simply the costs of stock trading, ii) the idea that a business owner takes on more risk than simply stock market risk (which is not all that relevant for a small business that doesn't trade in the stock market anyway).

ckaihatsu wrote:You're saying that in a natural disaster *capitalists* lose the most? Who are you comparing the capitalists to, in this scenario? And what's the natural disaster, exactly?


Say, an earthquake that destroys your factory. If you an uninsured or underinsured, you are going to eat a loss.
#15139732
ckaihatsu wrote:
Perhaps democracy is more like voting for a new National Assembly.



wat0n wrote:
...That effectively has no legislative powers since those are in the hands of the Constituent Assembly :eh:



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So if the cutoff was imposed *arbitrarily*, that favored the Republican Party at that point in the recount, then how is that in the spirit of democracy?

The 2000 election was statistically comparable to a coin-flip.



wat0n wrote:
It wasn't imposed arbitrarily, though. It was necessary to fulfill the Constitutional requirements of the Electoral College.

Even worse, the first count also placed Bush as winning Florida, and the recount was showing the same result...



Okay, what do you think of the Electoral College system?



The appropriateness of the Electoral College system is a matter of ongoing debate. Supporters argue that it is a fundamental component of American federalism by preserving the Constitutional role of the states in presidential elections. It is the implementation by the states that may leave it open to criticism; winner-take-all systems, especially in populous states, may not align with the principle of "one person, one vote".[a]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... al_College



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, Pinochet wasn't a *puppet* as much as he was a *collaborator*:



wat0n wrote:
The Americans believed the military didn't really need any help to topple the government and that any toppling of it would need to be carried out by the military anyway, as such, the Nixon administration decided it was not worth getting involved in coup plotting as early as 1972.



And yet the U.S. was *involved* in backing the coup:



Author Peter Kornbluh argues in The Pinochet File that the US was extensively involved and actively "fomented" the 1973 coup.[46]



He [Pinochet] stated that the coup itself was possible only through a three-year covert operation mounted by the United States.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_P ... f_the_coup



---


wat0n wrote:
Of course, this was not the result of some weird American aversion to be involved in carrying coups out against their enemies, one that was also absent among the Soviets. It was just a rather straightforward cost-benefit calculation and also learning the lessons from the failed Track II coup plot (yes, that was an actual plot which not only did not pan out, but the Americans' plan was not even implemented and they also learned that only the military can carry these out once there is a firm decision on their end).



Why did the U.S. *tolerate* the overthrow of democratically-elected Allende when it had ongoing information about the coup, *as* it was playing out -- ?



On the issue of CIA involvement in the 1973 coup, the CIA document is equally explicit:

On 10 September 1973 -- the day before the coup that ended the Allende government -- a Chilean military officer reported to a CIA officer that a coup was being planned and asked for US government assistance. He was told that the US Government would not provide any assistance because this was strictly an internal Chilean matter. The Station Officer also told him his request would be forwarded to Washington. CIA learned of the exact date of the coup shortly before it took place. During the attack on the Presidential Palace and its immediate aftermath, the Station's activities were limited to providing intelligence and situation reports.[35]

The report of the Church Committee, published in 1975, stated that during the period leading up to the coup, the CIA received information about potential coup plots.

The intelligence network continued to report throughout 1972 and 1973 on coup plotting activities. During 1972 the Station continued to monitor the group which might mount a successful coup, and it spent a significantly greater amount of time and effort penetrating this group than it had on previous groups. This group had originally come to the Station's attention in October 1971. By January 1972 the Station had successfully penetrated it and was in contact through an intermediary with its leader.[36]

Intelligence reporting on coup plotting reached two peak periods, one in the last week of June 1973 and the other during the end of August and the first two weeks in September. It is clear the CIA received intelligence reports on the coup planning of the group which carried out the successful September 11 coup throughout the months of July, August, and September 1973.[36]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... #1973_coup



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
A more-'puppet' example would be Uribe, in Colombia, regarding AUC operations, tied in with Plan Colombia with the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#Financing



wat0n wrote:
Maybe, I think we'll know in a few years just how much was the US involved in their defeat of the FARC.



'Maybe' -- ? Let's look at the numbers:



In 2000, the Clinton administration in the United States supported the initiative by committing $1.3 billion in foreign aid and up to five hundred military personnel to train local forces. An additional three hundred civilian personnel were allowed to assist in the eradication of coca. This aid was an addition to US$330 million of previously approved US aid to Colombia. US$818 million was earmarked for 2000, with US$256 million for 2001. These appropriations for the plan made Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid from the United States at the time, behind only Israel and Egypt.[19] Under President George W. Bush, aid to Colombia earmarked for military aid vs. humanitarian aid became more balanced. Ultimately, the U.S. would provide approximately US$10 billion under Plan Colombia through 2015.[20]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#Financing



In other words, this was the historical governmental-policy *scam* of 'The War on Drugs'. If the U.S. was so concerned about people's health and well-being from the potential abuse of physically-addictive ('hard') drugs, why didn't the government just provide *safe dispensaries* for such, and health-care drug-treatment for those who *abuse* such drugs?

Instead, the entire issue was made into political *hay* for governments, with a *gargartuan* artificial dog-eat-dog industry of the drugs-trade black markets, all due to *legalities*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, good point -- I *do*, because of the imperialist military invasion that preceded Stalin, and then also the country's critical need to *industrialize* despite the West's interference.

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



wat0n wrote:
Fair, then you shouldn't complain about their decision to give up on world revolution at least at the time. It was, from their perspective, simply the most rational decision at the time to consolidate their regime.



There was no 'choice' *available*. I don't defend Stalinism, but I don't see that there was any other *avenue* available at the time, either, especially since the country desperately needed to *industrialize* -- which requires nationalist consolidation, in the absence of a worldwide proletarian revolution to do it.


---


wat0n wrote:
And as importantly: The decision to be in bad terms with the US was a Venezuelan one for the most part. I highly doubt the Americans would give a crap about Venezuela otherwise.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This is *vague* -- what (joint) decision, purportedly made in 'bad terms' with the U.S. are you *referring* to, exactly?



wat0n wrote:
The decision to generally oppose US foreign policy of course. You don't seriously think the Americans care all that much about Venezuela, even more so when they were their main buyers of crude oil throughout the Chavez government did you? Their main goal regarding Venezuela (and Latin America more generally) is for them not be a pest to the US for the most part.



You have the countries' roles *reversed* -- here's the recent history:



Operation Gideon (Spanish: Operación Gedeón) was an unsuccessful attempt by Venezuelan dissidents and an American private military company, Silvercorp USA, to infiltrate Venezuela by sea and remove Nicolás Maduro from office in Venezuela. The plan involved entering the country by boat into Macuto port from 3 to 4 May 2020 in order to take control of Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetia, capture Maduro and other high-level figures in his government, and expel them from the country. The operation had been infiltrated by supporters of the Maduro government early on. Commentators and observers, including Guaidó officials who initially contracted with Silvercorp, described the operation as amateurish, underfunded, poorly-planned, having little or no chance of success, and a suicide mission.

The operation occurred in the broader context of an ongoing international dispute beginning in January 2019 over the identity of the legitimate president of Venezuela; Nicolás Maduro or Juan Guaidó. Throughout 2019, Maduro has maintained control of Venezuela's governmental and military institutions. The state intelligence agencies, as well as the Associated Press, had prior knowledge of the plot, which was intercepted before the first boat reached land.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020)



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're not defending your point about Holodomor, and you're not acknowledging Nazi aggression (to put it lightly) in the Holocaust -- and now you're comparing Stalin's hastened-industrialization-under-duress to Britain's *food profiteering* for profits that caused the potato famine for the Irish -- ?

Do you really think that *jumping around* a lot makes for good politics?



wat0n wrote:
I'm simply highlighting your double-standard here. Certainly the Holodomor was no industrialized extermination like the Holocaust was, but it does have a few parallels to the potato famine (which, by the way, had as its proximate cause a natural phenomenon - and if you don't like the British response to it, then you shouldn't like the Soviet response to the Holodomor either).



You *just acknowledged* that Stalin and Russia were under *duress* and *countervailing actions* in its bid to industrialize:


wat0n wrote:
Fair, then you shouldn't complain about their decision to give up on world revolution at least at the time. It was, from their perspective, simply the most rational decision at the time to consolidate their regime.



So, given those givens, here's what happened:



The collectivisation policy was enforced, entailing extreme crisis and contributing to the famine. In 1929–30, peasants were induced to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms, on which they would work as day-labourers for payment in kind.[52] Collectivization in the Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian SSR, was not popular among the peasantry and forced collectivisation led to numerous peasant revolts. The first five-year plan changed the output expected from Ukrainian farms, from the familiar crop of grain to unfamiliar crops like sugar beets and cotton. In addition, the situation was exacerbated by poor administration of the plan and the lack of relevant general management. Significant amounts of grain remained unharvested, and—even when harvested—a significant percentage was lost during processing, transportation, or storage.[citation needed]

In the summer of 1930, the government instituted a program of food requisitioning, ostensibly to increase grain exports. Subsequently, in 1932, food theft was made punishable by death or 10 years imprisonment.[52]

It has been proposed that the Soviet leadership used the man-made famine to attack Ukrainian nationalism, and thus it could fall under the legal definition of genocide.[44][49][53][54][55][56] For example, special and particularly lethal policies were adopted in and largely limited to Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933. According to Snyder, "each of them may seem like an anodyne administrative measure, and each of them was certainly presented as such at the time, and yet each had to kill."[57][58] Under the collectivism policy, for example, farmers were not only deprived of their properties but a large swath of these were also exiled in Siberia with no means of survival.[59] Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were ordered shot. There were foreign individuals who witnessed this atrocity or its effects. For example, there was the account of Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British journalist, which described the peak years of Holodomor in these words:

At every [train] station there was a crowd of peasants in rags, offering ikons and linen in exchange against a loaf of bread. The women were lifting up their infants to the compartment windows—infants pitiful and terrifying with limbs like sticks, puffed bellies, big cadaverous heads lolling on thin necks.[60]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes



---


I don't think it's appropriate to put Stalinization side-by-side with the factors of the potato famine, because in the case of England and Ireland the social disaster was due to a *land monopoly*, meaning *capitalism*:



The proximate cause of the famine was a natural event, a potato blight,[9] which infected potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, also causing some 100,000 deaths outside Ireland and influencing much of the unrest in the widespread European Revolutions of 1848.[10] From 1846, the impact of the blight was exacerbated by the Whig government's economic policy of laissez-faire capitalism.[11][12][13] Longer-term causes include the system of absentee landlordism,[14][15] and single-crop dependence.[16][17]



Food exports during Famine

Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food. In the magazine History Ireland (1997, issue 5, pp. 32–36), Christine Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer, and Drew University professor, relates her findings: Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women, and children died of starvation and related diseases. She also writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon, and ham actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland, the ports of the west coast. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, fish, oysters, lard, honey, tongues, and seed.

Writing in 1849, English poet and social reformer Ebenezer Jones wrote that "In the year A.D. 1846, there were exported from Ireland, 3,266,193 quarters of wheat, barley and oats, besides flour, beans, peas, and rye; 186,483 cattle, 6,363 calves, 259,257 sheep, 180,827 swine; (food, that is, in the shape of meat and bread, for about one half of the Irish population), and yet this very year of A.D. 1846 was pre-eminently, owing to a land monopoly, the famine year for the Irish people."[102][better source needed] Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9 imperial gallons; 41 litres. From January-September 1847, 822,681 imperial gallons (3,739,980 litres) of butter was exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of the Famine.[103] The problem in Ireland was not lack of food, which was plentiful, but the price of it, which was beyond the reach of the poor.[104]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
There *was no* 'Soviet Empire' -- you're thinking of the 19th century *monarchical* Russian Empire:

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



wat0n wrote:
No, I'm thinking of the Soviet Empire that was a contender in the Cold War. If the US is an Empire, so was the USSR from at least 1945 onwards.



This is rather *glib* -- here's my position on the dynamics behind the Cold War:



Following Williams, revisionists placed more responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace on the United States, citing a range of their efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[9] They argued that American policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining the market system and capitalist democracy. To achieve that objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad, aimed at increasing access to foreign markets for American business and agriculture.[1]

Revisionist scholars challenged the widely accepted scholarly research that Soviet leaders were committed to postwar expansion of communism. They cited evidence that the Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale and that Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies.[9] In that view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the World War II to be unable to pose any serious threat to the United States, who maintained a nuclear monopoly until the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949.[2]

Revisionist historians have also presented the view that the origins of the Cold War date to the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.[1] Some reach back even further as Wisconsin School historian Walter LaFeber in his study America, Russia, and the Cold War, first published in 1972, argued that the Cold War had its origins in 19th century conflicts between Russia and the United States over the opening of East Asia to American trade, markets and influence.[1] LaFeber argued that the United States commitment at the close of World War II to ensuring a world in which every state was open to American influence and trade, underpinned many of the conflicts that triggered the beginning of the Cold War.[2]

Starting with Gar Alperovitz in his influential Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965), revisionists have focused on the United States decision to use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the last days of World War II.[2] In their belief, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in effect started the Cold War. According to Alperovitz, the bombs were used not against an already-defeated Japan to win the war, but to intimidate the Soviets by signaling that the United States would use nuclear weapons to stop Soviet expansion, though they failed to do so.[1]

New Left historians Joyce and Gabriel Kolko's The Limits of Power: The World and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1954 (1972) has also received considerable attention in the historiography on the Cold War. The Kolkos argued American policy was both reflexively anticommunist and counterrevolutionary. The United States was fighting not necessarily Soviet influence, but also any form of challenge to the American economic and political prerogatives through covert or military means.[1] In this sense, the Cold War is less a story of rivalry between two blocs, but more a story of the ways by which the dominant states within each bloc controlled and disciplined their own populations and clients and about who supported and stood to benefit from increased arms production and political anxiety over a perceived external enemy.[3]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiog ... e_Cold_War



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wat0n wrote:
It may be a problem indeed, but it doesn't seem to be stopping the ongoing process of automation.

I also don't see how concentrating everything in the hands of the State would solve it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't either since I'm not a Stalinist. I call for the *workers of the world* to control all social production, including that of industrial mass production and any automation over the same.



wat0n wrote:
Why would that incentivize investment in fixed capital?



Proletarian control of the means of automated industrialized mass production would *not require* capital whatsoever -- no finance, no money, no capital, no trade, no exchanges, no explicit exchange value, no *implicit* exchange value.

Workers would undertake production efforts -- even if as simple as pushing a button -- for the sake of human humane *need*, and there would no longer be any catering to private interests (for endless material accumulations from profit-making), since private property would no longer exist.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
It's *internal*, and it's *non-productive*.

Now what objection do you conceivably have?



wat0n wrote:
That doesn't really address my point. Just because they don't directly produce any goods, it doesn't mean they are not taking part in the productive process.



Do you want to re-read what you just wrote? You may want to issue a *correction* at this point in things -- which *is* it, do non-productive employees *not* directly produce any goods, or *are* they taking part in the productive process -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
People would not typically choose to die of thirst, so if they were somehow being economically blackmailed, they would *have* to pay whatever they have for the sake of staying alive -- see people's *medical bills*, for example.



wat0n wrote:
Sure, this is consistent with a Subjective Theory of Value. It is definitely at odds with the Labor Theory of Value though.



ckaihatsu wrote:
How so?

You're *bullshitting*.



wat0n wrote:
Really? So why would someone's thirst change the socially-necessary labor to provide others with water?



For the scenario you're providing here, your invocation of a *subjective* theory of value (organic 'demand', basically), is apples-and-oranges in relation to the *labor* theory of value. Here's the *labor* theory of value:



Marx's solution was to distinguish between labor-time worked and labor power. A worker who is sufficiently productive can produce an output value greater than what it costs to hire him. Although his wage seems to be based on hours worked, in an economic sense this wage does not reflect the full value of what the worker produces. Effectively it is not labour which the worker sells, but his capacity to work.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value#Theory



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ckaihatsu wrote:
I never *said* that 'The Revolution' -- whatever that is -- began in England.

And nothing about Marxism 'predicted' that a (worldwide) proletarian revolution would begin in England.



wat0n wrote:
It was the most industrialized country in the world at the time. Of course it was reasonable to expect it to begin there, rather than the still industrializing Russia.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I agree that European countries nationalized and became colonialist *before* they industrialized, while the U.S. *industrialized* before it became *imperialist*.

*Politically* the question for the rest of the world's countries was whether they would objectively have to have their *own* bourgeois revolutions, as the Western countries did, before then going on to *proletarian* revolutions of their own.

Stalinists say 'yes', and they subscribe to the 'two-stage' theory (above), while Trotskyists say 'no', and they subscribe to Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution' which basically says that the more revolutionarily-advanced areas can *pull up* those areas in revolution that are *less industrialized*.



wat0n wrote:
Stalinists, though, never actually practiced what they preached in this regard. They seem to have wiped the bourgeoisie out first, and industrialized their countries themselves.



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wat0n wrote:
The bolded part is where you are wrong: Rentier capital may be rendered less profitable by technological progress if it becomes less necessary to produce. The most obvious example is land - maybe there will be some point in history that will enable us to be able to do away with land relatively cheaply be it by creating artificial land or by expanding onto other planets.



ckaihatsu wrote:
In terms of *property relations*, though, how would such be *treated*, exactly -- would an artificial island or a platform in space be an *asset*, or would it be a *commodity* -- ?

Consider that 'real estate' came into existence through nation-states, through law, and so were pre-existing *free* natural 'assets', by parcel, while any *object* or *item* that we may construct *on* a parcel of land, like a house, is really more of a *commodity*. It can be bought-and-sold, used or left, or demolished, while the land itself does *not* leave. It is a rentier-capital-type *asset*, definitively.

Could I *own* an artificial island outright? Could I fully *dismantle* it and sell it for scrap? What if I *did* dismantle it -- assuming that it's a metallic platform of some kind -- would I be in *violation* of some law concerning *zoning* -- ?

If the artificial island is made from building up from the land *itself*, to make *more land*, I seriously doubt that so much of that kind of thing could be constructed to have an impact on the entire larger global real estate *market pricing*, as you're suggesting. In other words the *costs* would be so great that such an asset could never *recover* on the costs to *construct* it in the first place, much less *devalue* all land everywhere else by dint of its quantity.

And now we have a real-world precedent:


Why Dubai's Man-Made Islands Are Still Empty



By the way, I realized after the last post that I was *remiss*, historically -- one cannot mention the *enclosure*, or *privatization* of common lands without also mentioning its *human cost* -- genocide.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides ... 90_to_1914


wat0n wrote:
That's why I'm saying we don't have the technology to do so, cheaply, for now. These islands, using your terminology (I would say a house built on land is also an asset, even a car is an asset - but whatever), would be a commodity.



My point stands that, contrary to your contention, the bulk added valuations of *all* artificially created land (whether removable or dredged) is not going to be enough *in quantity*, to affect the overall market of *land availability*. There's no capitalist 'overproduction' of land the way there is for plastic bottles.

If the artificial land is *removable*, as with being a metallic platform, then it's really more of a *commodity*, like a boat, in the sense of being created by *equity capital* (and exploited labor), whereas *dredged* land would more-likely be a *government* project, requiring large outlays for its construction, and so would be zoned as *permanent*, non-removable, and would be an *asset*.

If the creation of any artificial land is funded *privately* then those funds are going to want to see a *return* on those billions, and so the additional bulk land is *not* going to be generally 'available', as though all land is somehow 'pooled' in general and generally available to all, anyway -- land is high-powered and usually *expensive*, and piecemeal.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I mean you need to specify a *scenario*, or example, because we're discussing within the context of *finance* and economics. Without a 'case study' the term 'humanities' is too *abstract* in relation to 'value'.



wat0n wrote:
Do the arts or philosophy add value to society? They often have little commercial profitability.



I think it's mostly *class* based, since humanities-'production' would tend to reflect the *class* of the subject material covered, and so such cultural artifacts could either be *free* ('creative commons'), or *expensive* -- certain kinds of pop art, etc -- or somewhere in-between.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

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Humanities - Technology Chart 3.0

Spoiler: show
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---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, great, then who from 'government oversight' gives me a check?

What *you're* referring to is *state functions*, which are inherently *political*, since that's what government *is* -- a political institution in society, and so such has to inescapably be described *politically*, such as 'Whose interests does it serve?' 'What does good government look like versus what bad government looks like?', etc.



wat0n wrote:
But even then, a government that cannot (for instance) guarantee security or has a bureaucracy that is completely useless will be bad and unable to provide for anyone's interests.



I'll bet that government is providing *good* security for *someone*, and its bureaucracy is useful to *someone*'s interests -- again, it's *class-based*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The way I handle this kind of request is to ask for some *specificity* on your part. What *about* it do you want explained, or what aspect of it isn't clear to you?



wat0n wrote:
All of it, really. I'm guessing one doesn't always get what one wants... So?



I'll suggest you examine the physical / symbolic *differences* between the two frames, and do your best to discern the *meaning* there. Then maybe you can specify something in particular for me to address.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
As I just mentioned, the United Nations is formed out of *bourgeois* governments. The workers of the world have *no* hand in how bourgeois governments function, including the formation and function of the United Nations.

The United Nations, and its constituent bourgeois governments, would not suddenly be on the side of the *workers*, to *oppose* the interests of the bourgeois governments that they represented on just the previous day. Remember that the interests of the bourgeoisie (through bourgeois governments) is to make as much *profit* as possible through the exploitation of labor, while labor has the interests of making as much *wages* as possible through their work, which necessarily deprives company ownership of greater profits, from that same labor process. A dollar that goes to profits cannot also go to wages.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

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wat0n wrote:
My point is, even if it served workers it would still become an elitist bureaucratic institution.



The UN *doesn't* serve workers interests, and it *is* an elitist bureaucratic institution, because it represents the various nationalist interests of its constituent nation-states.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I mean the proposal *politically* -- meaning 'governance in the public interest', as with face-mask-wearing requirements to collectively displace the coronavirus.

Perhaps the perspective I've outlined would be generally seen as a *sound* one, that too much attention and activity on the part of many is focused on individually navigating the ups-and-downs of financial investments in the stock market, like individual vehicles on the roadways.

So, in line with reformist calls for a more robust public transportation system, the navigation of the stock market should be left to *professional investment managers*, while any commodity-productive wage work would *not* be deprived of its surplus labor value, for private profits and speculative profit-seeking in the stock markets, since the U.S. government had to *bail out* such private speculation -- bad debt -- with public funds, in the trillions of dollars, just this year, 2020.

Instead of punishing workers we should be *rewarding* them with the full labor value that they're creating, and punishing those who make their profits *from* wage laborers, since that money from worker-exploitation was used as *unsound investments*, and then was replaced with *public funds*, for the sake of saving the stock market.



wat0n wrote:
I don't think this response really addresses my point. I'm not referring simply to stock market trouble - even a small business owner takes on risk by operating. And they don't trade their ownership in the stock markets.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're talking about 'expenses' related to the professional role of 'investment manager' -- researching companies, meeting with their executives, etc., right?

So all of that is *still* *overhead*, which is non-productive. The *productive* part is the *service* being provided to the clients, that of investment advice.

All of this financial activity could still take place, *without* incurring the cost of profits, while *reducing* transaction costs on the whole because such would be *professionalized*, instead of being navigated like so many individual drivers in individual cars on the road.

People wouldn't have to be *amateur* investment owners, or, conversely, *overextended* investment owners navigating the markets themselves, and wage workers wouldn't have to give up their surplus labor value for the sake of incurring the tacked-on charge of profit-making, profits which all-too-often get *thrown away*, becoming *bad debts* that the government then has to use *public funds* to cover afterwards, creating *zombie companies*.



wat0n wrote:
No, I'm referring to something a lot broader than that. It is also costly to find clients to sell to, or to bargain in general.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're talking apples-and-oranges.

I wasn't describing non-profit organizations -- my proposal is about reducing transaction costs by *professionalizing* the economic role of financial decision-making, for *all investors*, into salaried positions. This approach is taking place every day anyway, and if this approach is *required* for all investors then wage workers wouldn't have to *give over* their surplus labor value, in the form of profits, to the companies they work for, to be *squandered*, then *bailed out* by government intervention in the markets.

In other words the value produced by work should *stay* with the workers themselves. Any investment (equity) capital that already exists should be managed for all investors *professionally*, by salaried employees.

In the following scenario the worker should get $20, not $10:





Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid $10 per hour. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can have him operate a boot-making machine with which the worker produces $10 worth of work every 15 minutes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of work and only pays the worker $10, capturing the remaining $30 as gross revenue. Once the capitalist has deducted fixed and variable operating costs of (say) $20 (leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.), he is left with $10. Thus, for an outlay of capital of $30, the capitalist obtains a surplus value of $10; his capital has not only been replaced by the operation, but also has increased by $10.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value#Theory



wat0n wrote:
Not really, I'm simply showing a counter-example to your claim.

I don't think the rest of this point really negates what I said about i) transaction costs being more than simply the costs of stock trading, ii) the idea that a business owner takes on more risk than simply stock market risk (which is not all that relevant for a small business that doesn't trade in the stock market anyway).



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying that in a natural disaster *capitalists* lose the most? Who are you comparing the capitalists to, in this scenario? And what's the natural disaster, exactly?



wat0n wrote:
Say, an earthquake that destroys your factory. If you an uninsured or underinsured, you are going to eat a loss.



Okay, so the capitalists aren't the only parties involved when the earthquake hits -- here's a suitable example from history:



The 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse (also referred to as the 2013 Savar building collapse or the Rana Plaza collapse) was a structural failure that occurred on 24 April 2013 in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka District, Bangladesh, where an eight-story commercial building called Rana Plaza collapsed. The search for the dead ended on 13 May 2013 with a death toll of 1,134.[2] Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building alive.[4] It is considered the deadliest structural failure accident in modern human history and the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history.[5][6]

The building contained clothing factories, a bank, apartments, and several shops. The shops and the bank on the lower floors were immediately closed after cracks were discovered in the building.[7][8][9] The building's owners ignored warnings to avoid using the building after cracks had appeared the day before. Garment workers were ordered to return the following day, and the building collapsed during the morning rush-hour.[10]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Dhak ... y_collapse
#15139756
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, what do you think of the Electoral College system?


It's coherent with the Federal system in place in the US, and has some advantages. This doesn't mean it's necessarily good, though, particularly since it often aligns with the popular vote anyway.

ckaihatsu wrote:And yet the U.S. was *involved* in backing the coup:


It was involved in helping the Pinochet regime at the beginning, at least until evidence of human rights violations - particularly against American citizens - pushed Democrats to block all aid from the US. But the coup itself was not an American decision, as the actual primary sources show (as opposed to Kornbluh's opinions on the matter, which is missing some of the files released during the Obama administration).

ckaihatsu wrote:Why did the U.S. *tolerate* the overthrow of democratically-elected Allende when it had ongoing information about the coup, *as* it was playing out -- ?


Why did the Soviets tolerate the overthrow of Batista? For the same reason the US tolerated the coup against Allende: It had no obligation to intervene to save an administration that was hostile to it. Why would they do that?

ckaihatsu wrote:'Maybe' -- ? Let's look at the numbers:


So?

ckaihatsu wrote:In other words, this was the historical governmental-policy *scam* of 'The War on Drugs'. If the U.S. was so concerned about people's health and well-being from the potential abuse of physically-addictive ('hard') drugs, why didn't the government just provide *safe dispensaries* for such, and health-care drug-treatment for those who *abuse* such drugs?

Instead, the entire issue was made into political *hay* for governments, with a *gargartuan* artificial dog-eat-dog industry of the drugs-trade black markets, all due to *legalities*.


One that benefited groups like FARC, you know. It seems these revolutionary groups were no more than simple drug lords :lol:

ckaihatsu wrote:There was no 'choice' *available*. I don't defend Stalinism, but I don't see that there was any other *avenue* available at the time, either, especially since the country desperately needed to *industrialize* -- which requires nationalist consolidation, in the absence of a worldwide proletarian revolution to do it.


Oh really? Well, then what's your complaint about them?

ckaihatsu wrote:You have the countries' roles *reversed* -- here's the recent history:


What do some mercenaries have to do with the US government?

ckaihatsu wrote:You *just acknowledged* that Stalin and Russia were under *duress* and *countervailing actions* in its bid to industrialize:


ckaihatsu wrote:So, given those givens, here's what happened:


So what you are saying, then, is that industrialization was so important that it was worth starving some Ukrainian peasants to death. Note that despite the famine, the Soviet government never quite decreased its exports of grain.

ckaihatsu wrote:I don't think it's appropriate to put Stalinization side-by-side with the factors of the potato famine, because in the case of England and Ireland the social disaster was due to a *land monopoly*, meaning *capitalism*:


Yeah, as opposed to the land monopoly by the Communist Party :lol:

ckaihatsu wrote:This is rather *glib* -- here's my position on the dynamics behind the Cold War:


Baseless revisionism, yeah, we know. I bet there was no imperialism involved when the Soviets supported the coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 or blockaded Berlin later that year :lol:

ckaihatsu wrote:Proletarian control of the means of automated industrialized mass production would *not require* capital whatsoever -- no finance, no money, no capital, no trade, no exchanges, no explicit exchange value, no *implicit* exchange value.

Workers would undertake production efforts -- even if as simple as pushing a button -- for the sake of human humane *need*, and there would no longer be any catering to private interests (for endless material accumulations from profit-making), since private property would no longer exist.


So you have no answer to that question, but simple hot air. After all, you know what "fixed capital" means.

ckaihatsu wrote:Do you want to re-read what you just wrote? You may want to issue a *correction* at this point in things -- which *is* it, do non-productive employees *not* directly produce any goods, or *are* they taking part in the productive process -- ?


What didn't you understand from that phrase?

Can a bank operate without an IT Department? Can a factory operate without a team in charge of the maintenance and repairs of its machinery? Neither generate revenue, do they?

ckaihatsu wrote:For the scenario you're providing here, your invocation of a *subjective* theory of value (organic 'demand', basically), is apples-and-oranges in relation to the *labor* theory of value. Here's the *labor* theory of value:


What does this have to do with my argument? Does the value of the goods produced (in this case, water processing and delivery) depend on the thirst of the consumer under this theory?

ckaihatsu wrote:By the way, I realized after the last post that I was *remiss*, historically -- one cannot mention the *enclosure*, or *privatization* of common lands without also mentioning its *human cost* -- genocide.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides ... 90_to_1914

My point stands that, contrary to your contention, the bulk added valuations of *all* artificially created land (whether removable or dredged) is not going to be enough *in quantity*, to affect the overall market of *land availability*. There's no capitalist 'overproduction' of land the way there is for plastic bottles.

If the artificial land is *removable*, as with being a metallic platform, then it's really more of a *commodity*, like a boat, in the sense of being created by *equity capital* (and exploited labor), whereas *dredged* land would more-likely be a *government* project, requiring large outlays for its construction, and so would be zoned as *permanent*, non-removable, and would be an *asset*.

If the creation of any artificial land is funded *privately* then those funds are going to want to see a *return* on those billions, and so the additional bulk land is *not* going to be generally 'available', as though all land is somehow 'pooled' in general and generally available to all, anyway -- land is high-powered and usually *expensive*, and piecemeal.


There is no capitalist production of land simply because we haven't figured a way out to produce it cheaply. Even artificial islands are rather expensive, compared to land. But there's nothing magical about it here, really, it's "just" a matter of developing the technology to do so cheaply (or improving transportation, communication and all sorts of other technology to such a degree that other planets can be profitably colonized). I agree though that we are far from it, just as we are far from a fully automated society - developing the necessary technology to this effect is easier said than done.

ckaihatsu wrote:I think it's mostly *class* based, since humanities-'production' would tend to reflect the *class* of the subject material covered, and so such cultural artifacts could either be *free* ('creative commons'), or *expensive* -- certain kinds of pop art, etc -- or somewhere in-between.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
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Humanities - Technology Chart 3.0

Spoiler: show
Image


They probably are, but I don't think you answered my question here. I think the humanities do add value to society, although just how much is up for discussion.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'll bet that government is providing *good* security for *someone*, and its bureaucracy is useful to *someone*'s interests -- again, it's *class-based*.


It all depends on how dysfunctional it is. But often in these cases of state failure the upper classes will just provide for their own security.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'll suggest you examine the physical / symbolic *differences* between the two frames, and do your best to discern the *meaning* there. Then maybe you can specify something in particular for me to address.


I did. Sorry, I do find your chart to be vague.

ckaihatsu wrote:The UN *doesn't* serve workers interests, and it *is* an elitist bureaucratic institution, because it represents the various nationalist interests of its constituent nation-states.


Sure, but it would not change all that much if it represented workers' interests. I can guarantee its bureaucracy would still exist.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, so the capitalists aren't the only parties involved when the earthquake hits -- here's a suitable example from history:


Sure, of course they aren't the only ones. Everyone loses out. So...?
#15140344
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, what do you think of the Electoral College system?



wat0n wrote:
It's coherent with the Federal system in place in the US, and has some advantages. This doesn't mean it's necessarily good, though, particularly since it often aligns with the popular vote anyway.



You prefer something more *elitist*, then? What would its power be based on?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
And yet the U.S. was *involved* in backing the coup:



wat0n wrote:
It was involved in helping the Pinochet regime at the beginning, at least until evidence of human rights violations - particularly against American citizens - pushed Democrats to block all aid from the US. But the coup itself was not an American decision, as the actual primary sources show (as opposed to Kornbluh's opinions on the matter, which is missing some of the files released during the Obama administration).



Okay, I'll *revise* my characterization, to say that Pinochet was an imperialist-collaborationist *comprador bourgeois*.



On 11 September 1973, Pinochet seized power in Chile in a U.S.-backed coup d'état[12][13][14][B] that toppled Allende's democratically elected Unidad Popular government and ended civilian rule.



After his rise to power, Pinochet persecuted leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the executions of from 1,200 to 3,200 people,[16] the internment of as many as 80,000 people, and the torture of tens of thousands.[17][18][19] According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was 3,095.[20] Operation Condor was founded at the behest of the Pinochet regime in late November 1975, his 60th birthday.[21]

Under the influence of the free market-oriented "Chicago Boys," Pinochet's military government implemented economic liberalization, including currency stabilization, removed tariff protections for local industry, banned trade unions, and privatized social security and hundreds of state-owned enterprises. Some of the government properties were sold below market price to politically connected buyers, including Pinochet's own son-in-law.[22] The regime used censorship of entertainment as a way to reward supporters of the regime and punish opponents.[23] These policies produced high economic growth, but critics state that economic inequality dramatically increased and attribute the devastating effects of the 1982 monetary crisis on the Chilean economy to these policies.[24][25] For most of the 1990s, Chile was the best-performing economy in Latin America, though the legacy of Pinochet's reforms continues to be in dispute.[26] His fortune grew considerably during his years in power through dozens of bank accounts secretly held abroad and a fortune in real estate. He was later prosecuted for embezzlement, tax fraud, and for possible commissions levied on arms deals.[27]



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




Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor; Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America.



The United States government provided planning, coordinating, training on torture,[15] technical support and supplied military aid to the Juntas during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and the Reagan administrations.[2] Such support was frequently routed through the CIA.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why did the U.S. *tolerate* the overthrow of democratically-elected Allende when it had ongoing information about the coup, *as* it was playing out -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Why did the Soviets tolerate the overthrow of Batista? For the same reason the US tolerated the coup against Allende: It had no obligation to intervene to save an administration that was hostile to it. Why would they do that?



Those two events are not comparable:



[Allende] served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.[9][10]



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




After finishing his term, Batista moved to Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that pre-empted the election.[6]



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
A more-'puppet' example would be Uribe, in Colombia, regarding AUC operations, tied in with Plan Colombia with the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#Financing



wat0n wrote:
Maybe, I think we'll know in a few years just how much was the US involved in their defeat of the FARC.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Maybe' -- ? Let's look at the numbers:


In 2000, the Clinton administration in the United States supported the initiative by committing $1.3 billion in foreign aid and up to five hundred military personnel to train local forces. An additional three hundred civilian personnel were allowed to assist in the eradication of coca. This aid was an addition to US$330 million of previously approved US aid to Colombia. US$818 million was earmarked for 2000, with US$256 million for 2001. These appropriations for the plan made Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid from the United States at the time, behind only Israel and Egypt.[19] Under President George W. Bush, aid to Colombia earmarked for military aid vs. humanitarian aid became more balanced. Ultimately, the U.S. would provide approximately US$10 billion under Plan Colombia through 2015.[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#Financing



wat0n wrote:
So?



So Colombia was paid by the U.S. to be a major collaborator in the U.S. War-on-Drugs policy paradigm.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
In other words, this was the historical governmental-policy *scam* of 'The War on Drugs'. If the U.S. was so concerned about people's health and well-being from the potential abuse of physically-addictive ('hard') drugs, why didn't the government just provide *safe dispensaries* for such, and health-care drug-treatment for those who *abuse* such drugs?

Instead, the entire issue was made into political *hay* for governments, with a *gargartuan* artificial dog-eat-dog industry of the drugs-trade black markets, all due to *legalities*.



wat0n wrote:
One that benefited groups like FARC, you know. It seems these revolutionary groups were no more than simple drug lords :lol:



As usual you're ignoring the actual *politics*:



The FARC–EP was formed during the Cold War period as a Marxist–Leninist peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutio ... f_Colombia



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ckaihatsu wrote:
There was no 'choice' *available*. I don't defend Stalinism, but I don't see that there was any other *avenue* available at the time, either, especially since the country desperately needed to *industrialize* -- which requires nationalist consolidation, in the absence of a worldwide proletarian revolution to do it.



wat0n wrote:
Oh really? Well, then what's your complaint about them?



My complaint with *Stalinism* -- simply that it didn't encourage workers-of-the-world *socialism*, as the Left Opposition did:



The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927[1] headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923 on the one hand and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.

The Left Opposition argued that the New Economic Policy had weakened the Soviet Union by allowing the private sector to achieve an increasingly important position in the Soviet economy while in their opinion, the centrally planned, socialised sector of the economy languished (including the mostly state-run heavy industries which were seen as essential not only for continued industrialisation but also defense). The platform called for the state to adopt a programme for mass industrialisation and to encourage the mechanization and collectivisation of agriculture, thereby developing the means of production and helping the Soviet Union move towards parity with Western capitalist countries, which would also increase the proportion of the economy which was part of the socialised sector of the economy and definitively shift the Soviet Union towards a socialist mode of production.[2]



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



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ckaihatsu wrote:
You have the countries' roles *reversed* -- here's the recent history:


Operation Gideon (Spanish: Operación Gedeón) was an unsuccessful attempt by Venezuelan dissidents and an American private military company, Silvercorp USA, to infiltrate Venezuela by sea and remove Nicolás Maduro from office in Venezuela. The plan involved entering the country by boat into Macuto port from 3 to 4 May 2020 in order to take control of Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetia, capture Maduro and other high-level figures in his government, and expel them from the country. The operation had been infiltrated by supporters of the Maduro government early on. Commentators and observers, including Guaidó officials who initially contracted with Silvercorp, described the operation as amateurish, underfunded, poorly-planned, having little or no chance of success, and a suicide mission.

The operation occurred in the broader context of an ongoing international dispute beginning in January 2019 over the identity of the legitimate president of Venezuela; Nicolás Maduro or Juan Guaidó. Throughout 2019, Maduro has maintained control of Venezuela's governmental and military institutions. The state intelligence agencies, as well as the Associated Press, had prior knowledge of the plot, which was intercepted before the first boat reached land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020)



wat0n wrote:
What do some mercenaries have to do with the US government?




On 30 April, during the Venezuelan presidential crisis, a group of several dozen military personnel[5] and civilians joined Juan Guaidó in his call for an uprising against Nicolás Maduro as part of what he labeled "Operation Freedom" (Spanish: Operación Libertad). Reuters reported an "uneasy peace" by the afternoon of 30 April.[5] During the uprising attempt, opposition leader Leopoldo López was freed from house arrest after being imprisoned for five years.[6] The head of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, Manuel Cristopher Figuera denounced the Maduro government and was dismissed from his position[7] before going into hiding.[8] At least 25 military men who opposed Maduro sought asylum at the Brazilian embassy in Caracas.[9]

Maduro expelled 54 members from the military and the head of intelligence who publicly backed Guaidó.[10] Regional and international media concluded that the uprising had failed, with CNN reporting that it "faltered, having apparently failed to gain the support of senior members of the Venezuelan military".[11][12][13] Guaidó also acknowledged he had received insufficient military support[14] and stated that protests would be held every day until Maduro stepped down from power.[15] Guaidó called for his supporters and the country's armed forces to take to the streets again the following day.[5]



United States – Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, tweeted "The U.S. Government fully supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy." [118]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Vene ... ng_attempt



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wat0n wrote:
So what you are saying, then, is that industrialization was so important that it was worth starving some Ukrainian peasants to death. Note that despite the famine, the Soviet government never quite decreased its exports of grain.



No, I don't think you're understanding -- industrialization requires supporting the *industrial* workers, and that happened at the expense of 'kulaks', or feudal-type large landowners:



Dekulakization (Russian: раскулачивание, raskulachivanie; Ukrainian: розкуркулення, rozkurkulennia) was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of kulaks (prosperous peasants) and their families in the 1929–1932 period of the first five-year plan. To facilitate the expropriations of farmland, the Soviet government portrayed kulaks as class enemies of the USSR.

More than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931.[4][5][6] The campaign had the stated purpose of fighting counter-revolution and of building socialism in the countryside. This policy, carried out simultaneously with collectivization in the Soviet Union, effectively brought all agriculture and all the laborers in Soviet Russia under state control.

Hunger, disease, and mass executions during dekulakization led to at least 530,000 to 600,000 deaths from 1929 to 1933,[7] though higher estimates also exist, Soviet era expert Robert Conquest estimating in 1986 that 5 million people may have died.[8] The results soon became known outside the Soviet Union.



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




Kulak (/ˈkuːlæk/; Russian: кула́к; plural: кулаки́, kulakí, 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), kurkul (Ukrainian: куркуль) or golchomag (Azerbaijani: qolçomaq, plural: qolçomaqlar) was the term used towards the end of the Russian Empire to describe peasants with over 8 acres (3.2 hectares) of land. In the early Soviet Union, particularly Soviet Russia and Azerbaijan, kulak became a vague reference to property ownership among peasants who were considered "hesitant" allies of the revolution.[1] In 1930–31 in Ukraine also existed a term of pidkurkulnyk (almost wealthy peasant).

The word kulak originally referred to former peasants in the Russian Empire who became wealthier during the Stolypin reform from 1906 to 1914. During the Russian Revolution, the label of kulak was used to chastise peasants who withheld grain from the Bolsheviks.[2] According to Marxist–Leninist political theories of the early 20th century, the kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants.[3] Vladimir Lenin himself described them as "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine,"[4] declaring revolution against them to liberate poor peasants, farm laborers, and proletariat (the much smaller class of urban and industrial workers).[5]

During the first five-year plan, Stalin's all-out campaign to take ownership and organisation from the peasantry meant that "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres [~2 ha] more than their neighbors" were labeled kulaks.[6] Under dekulakization, government officials seized farms and killed some resisters,[3][7] deported others to labor camps, and drove many to migrate to the cities following the loss of their property to the collective.[8]



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



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ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't think it's appropriate to put Stalinization side-by-side with the factors of the potato famine, because in the case of England and Ireland the social disaster was due to a *land monopoly*, meaning *capitalism*:



wat0n wrote:
Yeah, as opposed to the land monopoly by the Communist Party :lol:



Do you understand the difference between *private* property (private English land monopolies in Ireland), and *state* property (collectivized agriculture in the USSR) -- ?

You oftentimes ignore or gloss-over actual *political-economy* distinctions, which is downright *weird* on a political discussion board.


---


wat0n wrote:
No, I'm thinking of the Soviet Empire that was a contender in the Cold War. If the US is an Empire, so was the USSR from at least 1945 onwards.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This is rather *glib* -- here's my position on the dynamics behind the Cold War:


Following Williams, revisionists placed more responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace on the United States, citing a range of their efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II.[9] They argued that American policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining the market system and capitalist democracy. To achieve that objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad, aimed at increasing access to foreign markets for American business and agriculture.[1]

Revisionist scholars challenged the widely accepted scholarly research that Soviet leaders were committed to postwar expansion of communism. They cited evidence that the Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale and that Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies.[9] In that view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the World War II to be unable to pose any serious threat to the United States, who maintained a nuclear monopoly until the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949.[2]

Revisionist historians have also presented the view that the origins of the Cold War date to the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.[1] Some reach back even further as Wisconsin School historian Walter LaFeber in his study America, Russia, and the Cold War, first published in 1972, argued that the Cold War had its origins in 19th century conflicts between Russia and the United States over the opening of East Asia to American trade, markets and influence.[1] LaFeber argued that the United States commitment at the close of World War II to ensuring a world in which every state was open to American influence and trade, underpinned many of the conflicts that triggered the beginning of the Cold War.[2]

Starting with Gar Alperovitz in his influential Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965), revisionists have focused on the United States decision to use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the last days of World War II.[2] In their belief, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in effect started the Cold War. According to Alperovitz, the bombs were used not against an already-defeated Japan to win the war, but to intimidate the Soviets by signaling that the United States would use nuclear weapons to stop Soviet expansion, though they failed to do so.[1]

New Left historians Joyce and Gabriel Kolko's The Limits of Power: The World and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1954 (1972) has also received considerable attention in the historiography on the Cold War. The Kolkos argued American policy was both reflexively anticommunist and counterrevolutionary. The United States was fighting not necessarily Soviet influence, but also any form of challenge to the American economic and political prerogatives through covert or military means.[1] In this sense, the Cold War is less a story of rivalry between two blocs, but more a story of the ways by which the dominant states within each bloc controlled and disciplined their own populations and clients and about who supported and stood to benefit from increased arms production and political anxiety over a perceived external enemy.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiog ... e_Cold_War



wat0n wrote:
Baseless revisionism, yeah, we know.



Well, the term 'revisionism' has *two* meanings -- here, regarding the historiography of the Cold War, it's a certain academic 'camp', while the better-known meaning applies to post-Bolshevik *Stalinism*, in which Stalin asserted a revisionist political line of 'socialism-in-one-country'.


wat0n wrote:
I bet there was no imperialism involved when the Soviets supported the coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 or blockaded Berlin later that year :lol:



Ehhh, it was Cold War geopolitics -- what do you expect? You'd be pro-NATO, I presume.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
Proletarian control of the means of automated industrialized mass production would *not require* capital whatsoever -- no finance, no money, no capital, no trade, no exchanges, no explicit exchange value, no *implicit* exchange value.

Workers would undertake production efforts -- even if as simple as pushing a button -- for the sake of human humane *need*, and there would no longer be any catering to private interests (for endless material accumulations from profit-making), since private property would no longer exist.



wat0n wrote:
So you have no answer to that question, but simple hot air. After all, you know what "fixed capital" means.



'Fixed capital' is *equity capital*. I just *said* that *no* capital would be required, or used, post-capitalism, due to worldwide worker-collectivization of the post-capitalist political economy. I even developed a *model* for such:


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


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wat0n wrote:
That doesn't really address my point. Just because they don't directly produce any goods, it doesn't mean they are not taking part in the productive process.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you want to re-read what you just wrote? You may want to issue a *correction* at this point in things -- which *is* it, do non-productive employees *not* directly produce any goods, or *are* they taking part in the productive process -- ?



wat0n wrote:
What didn't you understand from that phrase?

Can a bank operate without an IT Department? Can a factory operate without a team in charge of the maintenance and repairs of its machinery? Neither generate revenue, do they?



I've already said that such overhead work roles are *internal* and *non-productive* to the company -- what are you expecting me to say here?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
For the scenario you're providing here, your invocation of a *subjective* theory of value (organic 'demand', basically), is apples-and-oranges in relation to the *labor* theory of value. Here's the *labor* theory of value:



wat0n wrote:
What does this have to do with my argument? Does the value of the goods produced (in this case, water processing and delivery) depend on the thirst of the consumer under this theory?



You were comparing-and-contrasting a *subjective* *use*-valuation (an individual's critical immediate need for water), to the *labor* theory of value. Now what's your argument regarding these two definitions?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
By the way, I realized after the last post that I was *remiss*, historically -- one cannot mention the *enclosure*, or *privatization* of common lands without also mentioning its *human cost* -- genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides ... 90_to_1914



wat0n wrote:
That's why I'm saying we don't have the technology to do so, cheaply, for now. These islands, using your terminology (I would say a house built on land is also an asset, even a car is an asset - but whatever), would be a commodity.



ckaihatsu wrote:
My point stands that, contrary to your contention, the bulk added valuations of *all* artificially created land (whether removable or dredged) is not going to be enough *in quantity*, to affect the overall market of *land availability*. There's no capitalist 'overproduction' of land the way there is for plastic bottles.

If the artificial land is *removable*, as with being a metallic platform, then it's really more of a *commodity*, like a boat, in the sense of being created by *equity capital* (and exploited labor), whereas *dredged* land would more-likely be a *government* project, requiring large outlays for its construction, and so would be zoned as *permanent*, non-removable, and would be an *asset*.

If the creation of any artificial land is funded *privately* then those funds are going to want to see a *return* on those billions, and so the additional bulk land is *not* going to be generally 'available', as though all land is somehow 'pooled' in general and generally available to all, anyway -- land is high-powered and usually *expensive*, and piecemeal.



wat0n wrote:
There is no capitalist production of land simply because we haven't figured a way out to produce it cheaply. Even artificial islands are rather expensive, compared to land. But there's nothing magical about it here, really, it's "just" a matter of developing the technology to do so cheaply (or improving transportation, communication and all sorts of other technology to such a degree that other planets can be profitably colonized). I agree though that we are far from it, just as we are far from a fully automated society - developing the necessary technology to this effect is easier said than done.



I think you're still missing the inherent legal *ambiguity* around such artificial land -- first, who would *pay* for it, and then who would *own* it, exactly?

If the *government* does it, whether removable platforms or from dredging, who does it *belong* to -- ? Would it be *auctioned* off? Could a private owner *remove* the platforms, or *destroy* the dredged land, so as to boost *remaining* / conventional real-estate land prices?

Would the public have any ongoing interest in the artificial land that the government paid-for, to create? If it goes *unused*, could it be *squatted* on? (Etc.)


---


wat0n wrote:
Do the arts or philosophy add value to society? They often have little commercial profitability.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I think it's mostly *class* based, since humanities-'production' would tend to reflect the *class* of the subject material covered, and so such cultural artifacts could either be *free* ('creative commons'), or *expensive* -- certain kinds of pop art, etc -- or somewhere in-between.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
Image



Humanities - Technology Chart 3.0

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
They probably are, but I don't think you answered my question here. I think the humanities do add value to society, although just how much is up for discussion.



Wouldn't you be apt to measure such according to *market* values, as for pop art, if any?


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ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll bet that government is providing *good* security for *someone*, and its bureaucracy is useful to *someone*'s interests -- again, it's *class-based*.



wat0n wrote:
It all depends on how dysfunctional it is. But often in these cases of state failure the upper classes will just provide for their own security.



But then whatever actions the private security forces take on behalf of the client the state will *underwrite*, politically:


Wealthy Teen Kills Four People, Blames Being Rich And Gets Probation

https://newsone.com/2810841/wealthy-tee ... probation/


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ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll suggest you examine the physical / symbolic *differences* between the two frames, and do your best to discern the *meaning* there. Then maybe you can specify something in particular for me to address.



wat0n wrote:
I did. Sorry, I do find your chart to be vague.



Okay -- here's the 'legend' to it, in *another* diagram. It may help:


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
The UN *doesn't* serve workers interests, and it *is* an elitist bureaucratic institution, because it represents the various nationalist interests of its constituent nation-states.



wat0n wrote:
Sure, but it would not change all that much if it represented workers' interests. I can guarantee its bureaucracy would still exist.



Hmmmm, you're not *getting* it -- there would have to be a political *process*, or *transition*, by which the character of an institution like the UN goes from being bourgeois, to proletarian (or whatever).

Things like that don't just change with the seasons -- there would have to be a significant political *event*, like a proletarian revolution, which, by character, wouldn't *need* a UN-type Stalinistic bureaucracy because it wouldn't be Stalinist, or confined to a single country.


---


wat0n wrote:
It's not just about market risk, though.

For instance, if there is a natural disaster that destroys all capital, who loses most?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, you got me -- who loses most?



wat0n wrote:
Whoever owned it, namely, the capitalist of course.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying that in a natural disaster *capitalists* lose the most? Who are you comparing the capitalists to, in this scenario? And what's the natural disaster, exactly?



wat0n wrote:
Say, an earthquake that destroys your factory. If you an uninsured or underinsured, you are going to eat a loss.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so the capitalists aren't the only parties involved when the earthquake hits -- here's a suitable example from history:


The 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse (also referred to as the 2013 Savar building collapse or the Rana Plaza collapse) was a structural failure that occurred on 24 April 2013 in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka District, Bangladesh, where an eight-story commercial building called Rana Plaza collapsed. The search for the dead ended on 13 May 2013 with a death toll of 1,134.[2] Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building alive.[4] It is considered the deadliest structural failure accident in modern human history and the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history.[5][6]

The building contained clothing factories, a bank, apartments, and several shops. The shops and the bank on the lower floors were immediately closed after cracks were discovered in the building.[7][8][9] The building's owners ignored warnings to avoid using the building after cracks had appeared the day before. Garment workers were ordered to return the following day, and the building collapsed during the morning rush-hour.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Dhak ... y_collapse



wat0n wrote:
Sure, of course they aren't the only ones. Everyone loses out. So...?



So *which* is it -- ?

Does the capitalist *owner* lose the most, or does *everyone* lose out?
#15140522
ckaihatsu wrote:You prefer something more *elitist*, then? What would its power be based on?


Is indirect democracy elitist?

I do see one big pro for the Electoral College: It gives incentives to politicians to keep the US decentralized, as opposed to fish for votes by prioritizing government spending in densely-populated regions (which would give the incumbent more "bang for the buck" so to speak).

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, I'll *revise* my characterization, to say that Pinochet was an imperialist-collaborationist *comprador bourgeois*.


Ah, another mischaracterization of what transpired in those years - Condor. No, actually as the Argentinians themselves admitted in the subsequent trials, they got much of their inspiration from the French execution methods during the Algerian War. Even more importantly, South American militaries didn't need Americans to teach them how to torture people.

Where the US was important, though, was in terms of providing aid and - generally speaking - diplomatic support except in the case of Pinochet, purely because of the ad-hoc nature of the Letelier case (i.e. a car bombing in Washington DC). The US also learned about Operation Condor in the mid 70s and during Kissinger's tenure decided to remain mostly silent about it (the Carter administration was a lot more critical about it, but never quite turned it into a condition for aid or diplomatic support). The prevailing view at the time is that these dictatorships were still more desirable than the alternative (communist takeovers of the governments in the South Cone) and thus that the US could just learn to live with them.

ckaihatsu wrote:Those two events are not comparable:


Oh, so you actually like bourgeois democracy now? Fine, then why did the Soviets tolerate the overthrow of the democratically-elected government in Czechloslovakia in 1948?

ckaihatsu wrote:So Colombia was paid by the U.S. to be a major collaborator in the U.S. War-on-Drugs policy paradigm.


So what? Why wouldn't the US support stopping drug dealers abroad if they are breaking the law in the US?

ckaihatsu wrote:As usual you're ignoring the actual *politics*:


So what? This does not convince anyone who is not a communist. I bet having child soldiers is fine as long as it furthers the cause of the revolution, am I correct?

ckaihatsu wrote:My complaint with *Stalinism* -- simply that it didn't encourage workers-of-the-world *socialism*, as the Left Opposition did:


Was that something that was in the books?

As for Venezuela, again, so what? What should the US do exactly, be friendly towards a hostile government like the Maduro one?

ckaihatsu wrote:No, I don't think you're understanding -- industrialization requires supporting the *industrial* workers, and that happened at the expense of 'kulaks', or feudal-type large landowners:


And starving the kulaks to death is a great way to do so!

ckaihatsu wrote:Do you understand the difference between *private* property (private English land monopolies in Ireland), and *state* property (collectivized agriculture in the USSR) -- ?

You oftentimes ignore or gloss-over actual *political-economy* distinctions, which is downright *weird* on a political discussion board.


Of course I do, which makes the events in the USSR even harder to excuse. It was either deliberate or a case of massive incompetence, one that debunks the Marxists' claims that Soviet socialism was an advanced stage of anything. This is even more poignant considering that the USSR never quite managed to fully catch up to the US and was eventually left behind Western Europe.

In reality all your arguments could have been used by the British (or maybe they have been) to justify the Irish famine.

ckaihatsu wrote:Well, the term 'revisionism' has *two* meanings -- here, regarding the historiography of the Cold War, it's a certain academic 'camp', while the better-known meaning applies to post-Bolshevik *Stalinism*, in which Stalin asserted a revisionist political line of 'socialism-in-one-country'.


Which one do you think I'm using here?

ckaihatsu wrote:Ehhh, it was Cold War geopolitics -- what do you expect? You'd be pro-NATO, I presume.


I know right? Same could be said about the Cuban Revolution or the dictatorships in South America - and other similar events abroad.

ckaihatsu wrote:'Fixed capital' is *equity capital*. I just *said* that *no* capital would be required, or used, post-capitalism, due to worldwide worker-collectivization of the post-capitalist political economy. I even developed a *model* for such:


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


Investopedia wrote:Fixed capital includes the assets and capital investments, such as property, plant, and equipment (PP&E), that are needed to start up and conduct business, even at a minimal stage. These assets are considered fixed in that they are not consumed or destroyed during the actual production of a good or service but have a reusable value. Fixed-capital investments are typically depreciated on the company's accounting statements over a long period of time—up to 20 years or more.


It seems to me fixed capital would of course be necessary in any industrialized society.

ckaihatsu wrote:I've already said that such overhead work roles are *internal* and *non-productive* to the company -- what are you expecting me to say here?


To acknowledge that these roles support production and therefore generate value.

ckaihatsu wrote:You were comparing-and-contrasting a *subjective* *use*-valuation (an individual's critical immediate need for water), to the *labor* theory of value. Now what's your argument regarding these two definitions?


Are they really apples-and-oranges? Understanding how value is generated is of course important to understand the behavior of economic agents.

ckaihatsu wrote:I think you're still missing the inherent legal *ambiguity* around such artificial land -- first, who would *pay* for it, and then who would *own* it, exactly?

If the *government* does it, whether removable platforms or from dredging, who does it *belong* to -- ? Would it be *auctioned* off? Could a private owner *remove* the platforms, or *destroy* the dredged land, so as to boost *remaining* / conventional real-estate land prices?

Would the public have any ongoing interest in the artificial land that the government paid-for, to create? If it goes *unused*, could it be *squatted* on? (Etc.)


Why would it be any different from how other similar assets are treated? Take a vessel, for instance. Why wouldn't it be treated just like large ships are?

ckaihatsu wrote:Wouldn't you be apt to measure such according to *market* values, as for pop art, if any?


That's one measure, I guess, but I think it's incomplete. There is an externality involved here - particularly since the humanities (and actually science too) depend on the transmission of ideas to add value to society.

ckaihatsu wrote:But then whatever actions the private security forces take on behalf of the client the state will *underwrite*, politically:


Wealthy Teen Kills Four People, Blames Being Rich And Gets Probation

https://newsone.com/2810841/wealthy-tee ... probation/


The irony is that he violated his probation conditions and spent a couple of years after the fact.

In a case of severe state failure, it matters little whatever the state underwrites or not.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay -- here's the 'legend' to it, in *another* diagram. It may help:


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image


Hmmmm... Okay, I guess?

ckaihatsu wrote:Hmmmm, you're not *getting* it -- there would have to be a political *process*, or *transition*, by which the character of an institution like the UN goes from being bourgeois, to proletarian (or whatever).

Things like that don't just change with the seasons -- there would have to be a significant political *event*, like a proletarian revolution, which, by character, wouldn't *need* a UN-type Stalinistic bureaucracy because it wouldn't be Stalinist, or confined to a single country.


But you do understand the bureaucratic structure would remain, right?

ckaihatsu wrote:So *which* is it -- ?

Does the capitalist *owner* lose the most, or does *everyone* lose out?


The owner loses the most if uninsured, at least from a strict financial POV. I think it's besides the point that I'm not counting those who get killed or maimed by such a disaster, particularly since such losses go beyond mere economic losses.
#15140620
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, what do you think of the Electoral College system?



wat0n wrote:
It's coherent with the Federal system in place in the US, and has some advantages. This doesn't mean it's necessarily good, though, particularly since it often aligns with the popular vote anyway.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You prefer something more *elitist*, then? What would its power be based on?



wat0n wrote:
Is indirect democracy elitist?



It tends towards a *consolidation* of elite rule, yes.


wat0n wrote:
I do see one big pro for the Electoral College: It gives incentives to politicians to keep the US decentralized, as opposed to fish for votes by prioritizing government spending in densely-populated regions (which would give the incumbent more "bang for the buck" so to speak).



You're comparing the Electoral College process in relation to entrenched *patronage* networks, which is fair -- patronage tends to be the *commodification* and *wielding* of political power.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, I'll *revise* my characterization, to say that Pinochet was an imperialist-collaborationist *comprador bourgeois*.



wat0n wrote:
Ah, another mischaracterization of what transpired in those years - Condor. No, actually as the Argentinians themselves admitted in the subsequent trials, they got much of their inspiration from the French execution methods during the Algerian War. Even more importantly, South American militaries didn't need Americans to teach them how to torture people.

Where the US was important, though, was in terms of providing aid and - generally speaking - diplomatic support except in the case of Pinochet, purely because of the ad-hoc nature of the Letelier case (i.e. a car bombing in Washington DC). The US also learned about Operation Condor in the mid 70s and during Kissinger's tenure decided to remain mostly silent about it (the Carter administration was a lot more critical about it, but never quite turned it into a condition for aid or diplomatic support). The prevailing view at the time is that these dictatorships were still more desirable than the alternative (communist takeovers of the governments in the South Cone) and thus that the US could just learn to live with them.



Okay, so Pinochet was a political front / beachhead in the Cold War, then.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Those two events are not comparable:


[Allende] served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.[9][10]

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


After finishing his term, Batista moved to Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that pre-empted the election.[6]

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



wat0n wrote:
Oh, so you actually like bourgeois democracy now? Fine, then why did the Soviets tolerate the overthrow of the democratically-elected government in Czechloslovakia in 1948?



Yet again, I'm *still* not a Stalinist. I'm not going to take sides in the Cold War, except for instances of egregious unfairness (balance-of-powers / -superpowers).

Yes, I would favor bourgeois democracy *over* a right-wing coup (Pinochet) that *overthrows* bourgeois democracy, as also with Venezuela in 2020.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So Colombia was paid by the U.S. to be a major collaborator in the U.S. War-on-Drugs policy paradigm.



wat0n wrote:
So what? Why wouldn't the US support stopping drug dealers abroad if they are breaking the law in the US?



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_invol ... rafficking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%8 ... tra_affair


---


wat0n wrote:
One that benefited groups like FARC, you know. It seems these revolutionary groups were no more than simple drug lords :lol:



ckaihatsu wrote:
As usual you're ignoring the actual *politics*:


The FARC–EP was formed during the Cold War period as a Marxist–Leninist peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutio ... f_Colombia



wat0n wrote:
So what? This does not convince anyone who is not a communist. I bet having child soldiers is fine as long as it furthers the cause of the revolution, am I correct?



Are you fucking arguing on the side of the *AUC* -- ?



The United Self-Defences of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC, in Spanish) was a Colombian far right paramilitary and drug trafficking group which was an active belligerent in the Colombian armed conflict during the period from 1997 to 2006. The AUC was responsible for retaliations against the FARC and ELN rebel groups as well as numerous attacks against civilians beginning in 1997 with the Mapiripán Massacre.[1]

The militia had its roots in the 1980s when militias were established by drug lords to combat rebel kidnappings and extortion by communist guerrillas.[2]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Se ... f_Colombia



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
My complaint with *Stalinism* -- simply that it didn't encourage workers-of-the-world *socialism*, as the Left Opposition did:


The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927[1] headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923 on the one hand and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.

The Left Opposition argued that the New Economic Policy had weakened the Soviet Union by allowing the private sector to achieve an increasingly important position in the Soviet economy while in their opinion, the centrally planned, socialised sector of the economy languished (including the mostly state-run heavy industries which were seen as essential not only for continued industrialisation but also defense). The platform called for the state to adopt a programme for mass industrialisation and to encourage the mechanization and collectivisation of agriculture, thereby developing the means of production and helping the Soviet Union move towards parity with Western capitalist countries, which would also increase the proportion of the economy which was part of the socialised sector of the economy and definitively shift the Soviet Union towards a socialist mode of production.[2]

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



wat0n wrote:
Was that something that was in the books?



It happened *historically*, yes.


wat0n wrote:
As for Venezuela, again, so what? What should the US do exactly, be friendly towards a hostile government like the Maduro one?



You tell me.


---


wat0n wrote:
So what you are saying, then, is that industrialization was so important that it was worth starving some Ukrainian peasants to death. Note that despite the famine, the Soviet government never quite decreased its exports of grain.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, I don't think you're understanding -- industrialization requires supporting the *industrial* workers, and that happened at the expense of 'kulaks', or feudal-type large landowners:



wat0n wrote:
And starving the kulaks to death is a great way to do so!



You're on the side of *feudalist privilege*, then -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't think it's appropriate to put Stalinization side-by-side with the factors of the potato famine, because in the case of England and Ireland the social disaster was due to a *land monopoly*, meaning *capitalism*:



wat0n wrote:
Yeah, as opposed to the land monopoly by the Communist Party :lol:



ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you understand the difference between *private* property (private English land monopolies in Ireland), and *state* property (collectivized agriculture in the USSR) -- ?

You oftentimes ignore or gloss-over actual *political-economy* distinctions, which is downright *weird* on a political discussion board.



wat0n wrote:
Of course I do, which makes the events in the USSR even harder to excuse. It was either deliberate or a case of massive incompetence, one that debunks the Marxists' claims that Soviet socialism was an advanced stage of anything.



You're *misconstruing* the Marxist position on Stalin -- here's the history of that *split*, again:

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


---


wat0n wrote:
This is even more poignant considering that the USSR never quite managed to fully catch up to the US and was eventually left behind Western Europe.

In reality all your arguments could have been used by the British (or maybe they have been) to justify the Irish famine.



And a mad scientist could stitch body parts together to create the Frankenstein monster, too.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, the term 'revisionism' has *two* meanings -- here, regarding the historiography of the Cold War, it's a certain academic 'camp', while the better-known meaning applies to post-Bolshevik *Stalinism*, in which Stalin asserted a revisionist political line of 'socialism-in-one-country'.



wat0n wrote:
Which one do you think I'm using here?



Why don't you tell *me*, since you're the nominal protagonist of this, here.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Ehhh, it was Cold War geopolitics -- what do you expect? You'd be pro-NATO, I presume.



wat0n wrote:
I know right? Same could be said about the Cuban Revolution or the dictatorships in South America - and other similar events abroad.



You're conflating the Cuban Revolution with right-wing dictatorships (supported by the U.S.) in Latin America?

More Frankensteinian politics, on your part.

Here's a *clue*, since the Cliff Notes you bought didn't *divulge* it:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Proletarian control of the means of automated industrialized mass production would *not require* capital whatsoever -- no finance, no money, no capital, no trade, no exchanges, no explicit exchange value, no *implicit* exchange value.

Workers would undertake production efforts -- even if as simple as pushing a button -- for the sake of human humane *need*, and there would no longer be any catering to private interests (for endless material accumulations from profit-making), since private property would no longer exist.



wat0n wrote:
So you have no answer to that question, but simple hot air. After all, you know what "fixed capital" means.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Fixed capital' is *equity capital*. I just *said* that *no* capital would be required, or used, post-capitalism, due to worldwide worker-collectivization of the post-capitalist political economy. I even developed a *model* for such:

communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338



wat0n wrote:


Investopedia wrote:
Fixed capital includes the assets and capital investments, such as property, plant, and equipment (PP&E), that are needed to start up and conduct business, even at a minimal stage. These assets are considered fixed in that they are not consumed or destroyed during the actual production of a good or service but have a reusable value. Fixed-capital investments are typically depreciated on the company's accounting statements over a long period of time—up to 20 years or more.



wat0n wrote:
It seems to me fixed capital would of course be necessary in any industrialized society.



You're simply speaking from within the context of *capitalism* -- I'm outlining a *post*-capitalist political economy, one controlled collectively by workers, and so would *not* require capital or private property of any kind. (See above.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I've already said that such overhead work roles are *internal* and *non-productive* to the company -- what are you expecting me to say here?



wat0n wrote:
To acknowledge that these roles support production and therefore generate value.



But they *don't* -- non-productive work roles do *not* add to production, yet they're objectively required for the business entity. They're *internal*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You were comparing-and-contrasting a *subjective* *use*-valuation (an individual's critical immediate need for water), to the *labor* theory of value. Now what's your argument regarding these two definitions?



wat0n wrote:
Are they really apples-and-oranges? Understanding how value is generated is of course important to understand the behavior of economic agents.



Yes, it *is* apples-and-oranges, because economic *demand* is not the same thing as the *mode of production*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I think you're still missing the inherent legal *ambiguity* around such artificial land -- first, who would *pay* for it, and then who would *own* it, exactly?

If the *government* does it, whether removable platforms or from dredging, who does it *belong* to -- ? Would it be *auctioned* off? Could a private owner *remove* the platforms, or *destroy* the dredged land, so as to boost *remaining* / conventional real-estate land prices?

Would the public have any ongoing interest in the artificial land that the government paid-for, to create? If it goes *unused*, could it be *squatted* on? (Etc.)



wat0n wrote:
Why would it be any different from how other similar assets are treated? Take a vessel, for instance. Why wouldn't it be treated just like large ships are?



Large container ships are *privately* owned. Next.

(My point stands.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Wouldn't you be apt to measure such according to *market* values, as for pop art, if any?



wat0n wrote:
That's one measure, I guess, but I think it's incomplete. There is an externality involved here - particularly since the humanities (and actually science too) depend on the transmission of ideas to add value to society.



Congratulations on finding your answer.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll bet that government is providing *good* security for *someone*, and its bureaucracy is useful to *someone*'s interests -- again, it's *class-based*.



wat0n wrote:
It all depends on how dysfunctional it is. But often in these cases of state failure the upper classes will just provide for their own security.



ckaihatsu wrote:
But then whatever actions the private security forces take on behalf of the client the state will *underwrite*, politically:


Wealthy Teen Kills Four People, Blames Being Rich And Gets Probation

https://newsone.com/2810841/wealthy-tee ... probation/



wat0n wrote:
The irony is that he violated his probation conditions and spent a couple of years after the fact.

In a case of severe state failure, it matters little whatever the state underwrites or not.



So then whether the state upholds justice or not, it's certainly benefitting the wealthy *ruling class*. My point stands.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay -- here's the 'legend' to it, in *another* diagram. It may help:


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Hmmmm... Okay, I guess?



Here's *another*, similarly:


Ideologies & Operations -- Bottom Up

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Hmmmm, you're not *getting* it -- there would have to be a political *process*, or *transition*, by which the character of an institution like the UN goes from being bourgeois, to proletarian (or whatever).

Things like that don't just change with the seasons -- there would have to be a significant political *event*, like a proletarian revolution, which, by character, wouldn't *need* a UN-type Stalinistic bureaucracy because it wouldn't be Stalinist, or confined to a single country.



wat0n wrote:
But you do understand the bureaucratic structure would remain, right?



No, not if it's a worldwide *proletarian* revolution, because, by definition, the world's workers could collectively control industrial mass production *themselves*, without recourse to any Stalinist-like bureaucracy, *anywhere*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So *which* is it -- ?

Does the capitalist *owner* lose the most, or does *everyone* lose out?



wat0n wrote:
The owner loses the most if uninsured, at least from a strict financial POV. I think it's besides the point that I'm not counting those who get killed or maimed by such a disaster, particularly since such losses go beyond mere economic losses.



So it's 'besides the point' that you're emphasizing financial losses over *human life* losses?
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