A question for our Marxists - Page 19 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15176495
Crantag wrote:
I think I caused a little confusion with how I responded previously. I should have composed the message better. Let me try again.



(In response to what I called my imagined communist-technoracy)


(My response was)


(On the localist thing, you said):


(My response was)




These two very separate things ('communist-technocracy' and 'localist/anarchist stuff') seem to have got conflated in your response.

I do blame myself for how I composed my prior message.



Well, if you ever want to discuss the *subject matter* -- such as similarities and differences between 'communist technocracy' (your term), and 'localist / anarchist stuff', please feel free to do so. Take care.
#15176496
ckaihatsu wrote:Well, if you ever want to discuss the *subject matter* -- such as similarities and differences between 'communist technocracy' (your term), and 'localist / anarchist stuff', please feel free to do so. Take care.

For sure. I will almost assuredly see you around this thread.

That other stuff, I took about as deep as I could go already.

Like I said, it was really just thoughts I have come up with through thought experiment more or less (but topics on which I haven't really studied and at present have no real interest in studying too much).

Marxist theory though is something I am fairly versed and interested in.

On the topic of 'anarchy', I did read through about half of Proudhon ('The Philosophy of Misery') once, but it was only so I could better understand Marx and Engels "The Poverty of philosophy". (So that I could laugh in greater context at the skewering they dealt him.)

I don't think I would waste time well spent on reading Marxist literature reading anarchist literature.

As such, I'm not the best guy to discuss those topics.

On the Marxist theory front, I'm still here.
#15176500
ckaihatsu wrote:'How society operates' -- ?

You mean *post-capitalist* society?

I'll remind you that we're discussing *political economy* -- I'm not building a *cult of personality* here. Either this model / framework *makes sense* for what it is / claims to be, or else it doesn't.

Here's the model framework, in full:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show
Image



labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


No, how actual society operates and how humans behave. Isn't that why Marx purported his theory to be scientific?

ckaihatsu wrote:Please enlighten your readers, then.


Sure. A simple example of financial engineering would be to come up with a good porfolio to invest your savings on.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're off on a tangent again -- low interest rates means that the entire *world economy* is 'meh', and there's not going to be a mad scramble to re-carve-up the world for neocolonialism, though that's certainly been *attempted* in the first two decades of the 21st century nonetheless, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.


Not necessarily, you could have a fast growing economy with a savings glut... Like the world economy in the early 2000s, courtesy of China and India.

ckaihatsu wrote:This is rather *economistic*, though -- if bourgeois society really adhered to such a 'bottom-line' / by-the-numbers set of principles, as you outline, then the *company's* finances would come first, which typically *isn't* the case. Instead, as I keep repeating, there's a definite *executive tier* that benefits disproportionately from corporate finance -- known as 'Wall Street', for simplicity.


What does this have to do with the issue of incentivizing employment?

ckaihatsu wrote:Good -- you're confirming what I'm saying. This housing problem parallels the *global warming* problem, in that everyone is just looking out for number-one, which is certainly understandable, but then at the scale of *the planet*, or *housing for people*, it falls short.

I've been meaning to include the following, since this dynamic / phenomena keeps popping up in these exchanges on this thread....


There is indeed an issue of incomplete markets with regards to real estate, although for rents specifically I'd say that it's just that the market adjusts slowly.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, then most likely the government social programs (UBS / UBI / whatever) are *underfunded*, and subpar as a result.


How can you tell what services each and every recipient wants? Using current technology.

ckaihatsu wrote:So everything's sunshine and rainbows now -- ? Banks and corporations are *hardly* independent now -- if anything we're now definitely in a *statist* kind of political economy, worldwide:


I thought we were talking about the US...?

ckaihatsu wrote:Let me put it *this* way -- if you have something *political* to say then that message is going to rely entirely on how well or how poorly you elucidate it.

Going off on tangents all the time, as you do, shows a lack of *focus* on your part regarding issues of *political economy*. You often prefer to *evade* the topics, in favor of descending into mere empiricism, descriptions / demographics, and academizing.

I have no obligation to respond to your casual, unfocused, idiosyncratic personal spin-offs.


It's not a tangent, at all. I can perfectly agree with some of their demands or sympathize with some of their goals while opposing others and their behavior.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay -- by *extension*, whose fault is it that housing isn't being *constructed*, requiring construction *jobs*, and *workers* -- ?


Weren't we speaking about a scenario where such housing is built, but by machines rather than humans?

ckaihatsu wrote:No, the definitions themselves are *not* that controversial or about hair-splitting -- the 'no true Scotsman' characterization is a *dramatization*, and is about *individual* political leanings, when simple glossary / dictionary definitions would do just fine for the categories themselves. Here's mine:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image


It's either no true Scotsman or "your proposal has not shown to be implementable anywhere".

ckaihatsu wrote:And what was the cause of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression?


Well, there have been actually plenty of different proposed causes. But now that you mentioned it, capitalism also survived that.

ckaihatsu wrote:Are you a nationalist? Do you agree with Mussolini's break from socialism, to prefer cross-class nationalism?


Only very mildly so for your first question, as for the second one I take no position. My point though is that wasn't Mussolini a socialist before becoming what he became? Don't you think that the reality he saw pushed him away from socialism, not necessarily because he hated the working class but simply because he thought he had seen a real world event that shouldn't have happened according to certain readings of socialism?

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, so you're confirming that you have no differences with Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development -- correct?


Why does that happen according to Trotsky?
#15176590
ckaihatsu wrote:
'How society operates' -- ?

You mean *post-capitalist* society?

I'll remind you that we're discussing *political economy* -- I'm not building a *cult of personality* here. Either this model / framework *makes sense* for what it is / claims to be, or else it doesn't.

Here's the model framework, in full:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show
Image



labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338



wat0n wrote:
No, how actual society operates and how humans behave. Isn't that why Marx purported his theory to be scientific?



What the hell are you even talking about -- you sound like you're more interested in *social psychology* than in *political economy*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Please enlighten your readers, then.



wat0n wrote:
Sure. A simple example of financial engineering would be to come up with a good porfolio to invest your savings on.



Okay, again you're diverging away from political economy, this time into *financial planning*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're off on a tangent again -- low interest rates means that the entire *world economy* is 'meh', and there's not going to be a mad scramble to re-carve-up the world for neocolonialism, though that's certainly been *attempted* in the first two decades of the 21st century nonetheless, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.



wat0n wrote:
Not necessarily, you could have a fast growing economy with a savings glut... Like the world economy in the early 2000s, courtesy of China and India.



You're missing the point again -- I'm saying that capitalist imperialist warfare is at an *ebb* since the global economy is so moribund.

I think we're increasingly talking past each other.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're *still* not getting it -- the way to *easily* get workers off of UI payments is to offer *better* rates of wages, for actual job openings, so that there's no question about which rate is more desirable, the UI or the job wage.

Look at what *companies* do to incentivize executive-type participation -- they *entice* executives with pay packages, bonuses, golden /parachutes, etc., so as to make it a no-brainer for the prospective employee.



wat0n wrote:
That's indeed something that may happen, but businesses that can't keep up will simply disappear and its potential employment will be lost. It's not radically different from raising the minimum wage too much.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This is rather *economistic*, though -- if bourgeois society really adhered to such a 'bottom-line' / by-the-numbers set of principles, as you outline, then the *company's* finances would come first, which typically *isn't* the case. Instead, as I keep repeating, there's a definite *executive tier* that benefits disproportionately from corporate finance -- known as 'Wall Street', for simplicity.



wat0n wrote:
What does this have to do with the issue of incentivizing employment?



Correct. The bourgeois ruling class isn't interested in *employment*, exactly, but moreso in *exploitation* and *profits*, as during the pandemic.

Here's a current news article:


These businesses found a way around the worker shortage: Raising wages to $15 an hour or more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... ing-wages/


---


wat0n wrote:
If the owner stops investing in maintaining the property, then the usual laws to deal with it (including eminent domain, but it's not the only one) will kick in. But if the owners are paying to keep them up, then I think it's safe to assume they expect it will stop being vacant relatively soon.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Good -- you're confirming what I'm saying. This housing problem parallels the *global warming* problem, in that everyone is just looking out for number-one, which is certainly understandable, but then at the scale of *the planet*, or *housing for people*, it falls short.

I've been meaning to include the following, since this dynamic / phenomena keeps popping up in these exchanges on this thread....


In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.[1] Market failures can be viewed as scenarios where individuals' pursuit of pure self-interest leads to results that are not efficient– that can be improved upon from the societal point of view.[2][3]

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



wat0n wrote:
There is indeed an issue of incomplete markets with regards to real estate, although for rents specifically I'd say that it's just that the market adjusts slowly.



You're implying that the (real estate) market is *optimal*, though -- that *eventually* supply matches demand, and everything is hunky-dory. You're not even taking into account that people exist who *need* housing but *can't afford* it, and yet housing units are vacant and receiving *zero* dollars in revenue per month.

When it comes to the issue of housing and real estate you're satisfied to let the market rule, despite the 'externality' of homelessness existing as a result of this dogmatic adherence to the market mechanism.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, then most likely the government social programs (UBS / UBI / whatever) are *underfunded*, and subpar as a result.



wat0n wrote:
How can you tell what services each and every recipient wants? Using current technology.



Yup, glad you asked -- this is *exactly* the kind of thing that a post-capitalist political economy needs to address, and which my 'labor credits' model *does* address:



consumption [demand] -- Every person in a locality has a standard, one-through-infinity ranking system of political demands available to them, updated daily



consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination



consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process



https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So everything's sunshine and rainbows now -- ? Banks and corporations are *hardly* independent now -- if anything we're now definitely in a *statist* kind of political economy, worldwide:



wat0n wrote:
I thought we were talking about the US...?



Here's the part from the excerpt that you missed:



United States

After the 2008 crisis, rigorous stress tests forced some banks to recapitalize. This may have prevented the phenomenon of zombie banks, but there is a possibility that zombie companies exist; their earnings are less than their interest expenses. Such companies are therefore incapable of making a profit, since all revenue is spent on repaying creditors and paying off expenses.[6]

Causes

Banks become zombies due to bad loans which they have made. In slow economies, businesses that borrowed from banks become unable to pay the loans back. Capital infusions to a bank, received primarily from the government but also from central bank loans, turn it into a zombie bank.

These infusions are generally referred to as regulatory forbearance. They enable the banks to postpone the recognition of their losses. The government gives zombie banks cash-flow leeway in the hope that they will be able to make profits over time, thus being able to cover their losses and revitalize. Rather than pressing businesses for repayment, however, zombie banks often use the money received from the government to extend the terms of their loans to businesses, which in turn causes the existence of zombie companies.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's good that you see activism against killer cops and police brutality as being in the mode of *civil rights*, but you're continuing to be *vague* about whatever other points you're vaguely indicating. Don't expect me to address anything that you're merely *indicating*, and not describing *explicitly*.



wat0n wrote:
So what I've mentioned about their lack of respect for freedom of expression isn't enough to you?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Let me put it *this* way -- if you have something *political* to say then that message is going to rely entirely on how well or how poorly you elucidate it.

Going off on tangents all the time, as you do, shows a lack of *focus* on your part regarding issues of *political economy*. You often prefer to *evade* the topics, in favor of descending into mere empiricism, descriptions / demographics, and academizing.

I have no obligation to respond to your casual, unfocused, idiosyncratic personal spin-offs.



wat0n wrote:
It's not a tangent, at all. I can perfectly agree with some of their demands or sympathize with some of their goals while opposing others and their behavior.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Far more-to-the-point is whether society's industrial mass production is being made *available* broadly, to all who need it. A good example would be the *housing* treatment, from previously, a few segments earlier.

If 'technological development' is able to produce *housing* / rental units to the point where quantities of them are lying *vacant* every month, then what *good* is that technological development when people aren't actually able to *benefit* from it, as with receiving housing that isn't being used anyway -- ?

I'm not going to worry about which numbers of workers are or aren't working in the construction industry as much as I'm going to be concerned with why absolutely *good housing* is being actively *kept vacant* with policing, paid for with public funds.



wat0n wrote:
Maybe you aren't worried about the construction workers who may lose income if the industry becomes automated, but believe me that they are.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay -- by *extension*, whose fault is it that housing isn't being *constructed*, requiring construction *jobs*, and *workers* -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Weren't we speaking about a scenario where such housing is built, but by machines rather than humans?



This is a *chatbot* kind of response -- what's your *comment* -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, the definitions themselves are *not* that controversial or about hair-splitting -- the 'no true Scotsman' characterization is a *dramatization*, and is about *individual* political leanings, when simple glossary / dictionary definitions would do just fine for the categories themselves. Here's mine:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
It's either no true Scotsman or "your proposal has not shown to be implementable anywhere".



'Not implementable' -- ? This is a rather *glib* historical take on revolution and counterrevolution. You're glossing over the class forces involved in bringing about the overthrow of capitalism. Just because something *hasn't* been done doesn't automatically mean that it *can't* be done.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What kind of 'flexibility' do you mean here?



wat0n wrote:
I think it's accurate to say it has been able to adapt to all sorts of different conditions (big cultural, ideological and technological changes, two world wars, etc). That's what I mean.



ckaihatsu wrote:
And what was the cause of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression?



wat0n wrote:
Well, there have been actually plenty of different proposed causes. But now that you mentioned it, capitalism also survived that.



You're really a market dogmatist, aren't you, no matter the human cost.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you a nationalist? Do you agree with Mussolini's break from socialism, to prefer cross-class nationalism?



wat0n wrote:
Only very mildly so for your first question, as for the second one I take no position. My point though is that wasn't Mussolini a socialist before becoming what he became? Don't you think that the reality he saw pushed him away from socialism, not necessarily because he hated the working class but simply because he thought he had seen a real world event that shouldn't have happened according to certain readings of socialism?



What 'real world event' do you mean here?

You're 'neutral' on cross-class nationalism, like Mussolini's ultra-nationalism / fascism -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so you're confirming that you have no differences with Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development -- correct?



wat0n wrote:
Why does that happen according to Trotsky?



You're not answering my question. Go ahead and do your own research and get back to me, if you like.
#15176591
ckaihatsu wrote:What the hell are you even talking about -- you sound like you're more interested in *social psychology* than in *political economy*.


What makes Marxian socialism scientific? You do realize Marx was basing his analysis on how he believed capitalism operates to make his predictions about the future, right?

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, again you're diverging away from political economy, this time into *financial planning*.


:roll:

ckaihatsu wrote:You're missing the point again -- I'm saying that capitalist imperialist warfare is at an *ebb* since the global economy is so moribund.

I think we're increasingly talking past each other.


Again, before the pandemic China and the other emerging economies were growing for the most part. It's normal for already developed economies to grow at a slower pace.

ckaihatsu wrote:Correct. The bourgeois ruling class isn't interested in *employment*, exactly, but moreso in *exploitation* and *profits*, as during the pandemic.

Here's a current news article:


These businesses found a way around the worker shortage: Raising wages to $15 an hour or more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... ing-wages/


Businesses want to generate profits, that's nor surprising. Nor it is to see some raising wages to deal with labor shortages.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're implying that the (real estate) market is *optimal*, though -- that *eventually* supply matches demand, and everything is hunky-dory. You're not even taking into account that people exist who *need* housing but *can't afford* it, and yet housing units are vacant and receiving *zero* dollars in revenue per month.

When it comes to the issue of housing and real estate you're satisfied to let the market rule, despite the 'externality' of homelessness existing as a result of this dogmatic adherence to the market mechanism.


I think you are confusing short term and long term issues. What you mention about homelessness is largely a long term issue, one that would be solved by making building homes easier.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yup, glad you asked -- this is *exactly* the kind of thing that a post-capitalist political economy needs to address, and which my 'labor credits' model *does* address:


But right now, it would be simpler to just give UBI over UBS.

ckaihatsu wrote:Here's the part from the excerpt that you missed:


It says quite clearly banks did not zombify, which was your claim.

ckaihatsu wrote:This is a *chatbot* kind of response -- what's your *comment* -- ?


Sounds like you changed the topic. Again, weren't we starting from the assumption that house construction becomes automatized and thus done by machines?

ckaihatsu wrote:'Not implementable' -- ? This is a rather *glib* historical take on revolution and counterrevolution. You're glossing over the class forces involved in bringing about the overthrow of capitalism. Just because something *hasn't* been done doesn't automatically mean that it *can't* be done.


The burden on proof falls on you, however.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're really a market dogmatist, aren't you, no matter the human cost.


Not at all. The Fed and the US government in general didn't manage the crisis properly, which is why macroeconomics even exists.

ckaihatsu wrote:What 'real world event' do you mean here?


The mass participation of workers in their national armies in several European countries during WWI. So... Why did this happen?

ckaihatsu wrote:You're 'neutral' on cross-class nationalism, like Mussolini's ultra-nationalism / fascism -- ?


As a whole, I'm neutral on nationalism. I don't like the fanatical and fascist versions of it, but your question wasn't about fascism or fanatical nationalism but simply if dividing people by nations is preferable to doing so by class.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're not answering my question. Go ahead and do your own research and get back to me, if you like.


I want more details about what Trotsky believed. In reality, there can be many mutually competing explanations for the phenomenon.
#15176634
ckaihatsu wrote:
What the hell are you even talking about -- you sound like you're more interested in *social psychology* than in *political economy*.



wat0n wrote:
What makes Marxian socialism scientific? You do realize Marx was basing his analysis on how he believed capitalism operates to make his predictions about the future, right?



'Predictions' -- ?

Now you're thinking of the *hard* sciences, which lend themselves to *clinical* work, and analysis, like making predictions over a known quantity of whatever.

Political economy, including Marx, is better situated as a 'soft' science, meaning that it's about *social history* -- which could be defined as the ongoing balance between the two opposing class forces. (See 'cooperation / competition' in the following diagram, which is 'social history'.)


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
Image



The social sciences use *inductive reasoning*, and not hard-science, clinical *deductive reasoning*:


inductive vs. deductive reasoning

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, again you're diverging away from political economy, this time into *financial planning*.



wat0n wrote:
:roll:



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're missing the point again -- I'm saying that capitalist imperialist warfare is at an *ebb* since the global economy is so moribund.

I think we're increasingly talking past each other.



wat0n wrote:
Again, before the pandemic China and the other emerging economies were growing for the most part. It's normal for already developed economies to grow at a slower pace.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Correct. The bourgeois ruling class isn't interested in *employment*, exactly, but moreso in *exploitation* and *profits*, as during the pandemic.

Here's a current news article:


These businesses found a way around the worker shortage: Raising wages to $15 an hour or more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... ing-wages/



wat0n wrote:
Businesses want to generate profits, that's nor surprising. Nor it is to see some raising wages to deal with labor shortages.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're implying that the (real estate) market is *optimal*, though -- that *eventually* supply matches demand, and everything is hunky-dory. You're not even taking into account that people exist who *need* housing but *can't afford* it, and yet housing units are vacant and receiving *zero* dollars in revenue per month.

When it comes to the issue of housing and real estate you're satisfied to let the market rule, despite the 'externality' of homelessness existing as a result of this dogmatic adherence to the market mechanism.



wat0n wrote:
I think you are confusing short term and long term issues. What you mention about homelessness is largely a long term issue, one that would be solved by making building homes easier.



Would the *market* allow for that, though, and, more to the point, what about the *existing* empirical supply of housing (vacant units) that isn't / can't be brought into the market economy because of the lack of people (who need housing) with money to *be included* in the market economy for housing -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, then most likely the government social programs (UBS / UBI / whatever) are *underfunded*, and subpar as a result.



wat0n wrote:
How can you tell what services each and every recipient wants? Using current technology.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Yup, glad you asked -- this is *exactly* the kind of thing that a post-capitalist political economy needs to address, and which my 'labor credits' model *does* address:




consumption [demand] -- Every person in a locality has a standard, one-through-infinity ranking system of political demands available to them, updated daily

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination

consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338



wat0n wrote:
But right now, it would be simpler to just give UBI over UBS.



'Simpler' -- ?

Really -- ? That's your standard for any given political economy implementation? That it just needs to be *simpler*?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's the part from the excerpt that you missed:



wat0n wrote:
It says quite clearly banks did not zombify, which was your claim.



Here's the portion from the part from the excerpt that you missed:



Banks become zombies due to bad loans which they have made.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Far more-to-the-point is whether society's industrial mass production is being made *available* broadly, to all who need it. A good example would be the *housing* treatment, from previously, a few segments earlier.

If 'technological development' is able to produce *housing* / rental units to the point where quantities of them are lying *vacant* every month, then what *good* is that technological development when people aren't actually able to *benefit* from it, as with receiving housing that isn't being used anyway -- ?

I'm not going to worry about which numbers of workers are or aren't working in the construction industry as much as I'm going to be concerned with why absolutely *good housing* is being actively *kept vacant* with policing, paid for with public funds.



wat0n wrote:
Maybe you aren't worried about the construction workers who may lose income if the industry becomes automated, but believe me that they are.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay -- by *extension*, whose fault is it that housing isn't being *constructed*, requiring construction *jobs*, and *workers* -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Weren't we speaking about a scenario where such housing is built, but by machines rather than humans?



ckaihatsu wrote:
This is a *chatbot* kind of response -- what's your *comment* -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Sounds like you changed the topic. Again, weren't we starting from the assumption that house construction becomes automatized and thus done by machines?



To sum up, I'm more interested in seeing that people *receive* the fruits of industrial mass production, like housing units / apartments, than I am with *how* those goods and services are produced.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Not implementable' -- ? This is a rather *glib* historical take on revolution and counterrevolution. You're glossing over the class forces involved in bringing about the overthrow of capitalism. Just because something *hasn't* been done doesn't automatically mean that it *can't* be done.



wat0n wrote:
The burden on proof falls on you, however.



Again you're confusing *clinical* science with *social* science -- there's no 'burden of proof' in revolutionary socialism since the entire point is to supersede the (bourgeois) class divide.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
And what was the cause of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression?



wat0n wrote:
Well, there have been actually plenty of different proposed causes. But now that you mentioned it, capitalism also survived that.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're really a market dogmatist, aren't you, no matter the human cost.



wat0n wrote:
Not at all. The Fed and the US government in general didn't manage the crisis properly, which is why macroeconomics even exists.



Any comment on the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, in terms of 'managing' the credit ratings agencies?



Credit rating agencies (CRAs)—firms which rate debt instruments/securities according to the debtor's ability to pay lenders back—played a significant role at various stages in the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–2008 that led to the great recession of 2008–2009. The new, complex securities of "structured finance" used to finance subprime mortgages could not have been sold without ratings by the "Big Three" rating agencies—Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings. A large section of the debt securities market—many money markets and pension funds—were restricted in their bylaws to holding only the safest securities—i.e. securities the rating agencies designated "triple-A".[1] The pools of debt the agencies gave their highest ratings to [2] included over three trillion dollars of loans to homebuyers with bad credit and undocumented incomes through 2007.[3] Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of these triple-A securities were downgraded to "junk" status by 2010,[1][4][5] and the writedowns and losses came to over half a trillion dollars.[6][7] This led "to the collapse or disappearance" in 2008–09 of three major investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch), and the federal governments buying of $700 billion of bad debt from distressed financial institutions.[7]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_ra ... ime_crisis



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you a nationalist? Do you agree with Mussolini's break from socialism, to prefer cross-class nationalism?



wat0n wrote:
Only very mildly so for your first question, as for the second one I take no position. My point though is that wasn't Mussolini a socialist before becoming what he became? Don't you think that the reality he saw pushed him away from socialism, not necessarily because he hated the working class but simply because he thought he had seen a real world event that shouldn't have happened according to certain readings of socialism?



ckaihatsu wrote:
What 'real world event' do you mean here?



wat0n wrote:
The mass participation of workers in their national armies in several European countries during WWI. So... Why did this happen?



What you're referencing is the phenomenon of 'false consciousness'. It's not a perfect world....



False consciousness is a term used by some to describe ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to address the scenario where a subordinate class willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class.[1][2] Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the class is asserting itself towards goals that do not benefit it.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're 'neutral' on cross-class nationalism, like Mussolini's ultra-nationalism / fascism -- ?



wat0n wrote:
As a whole, I'm neutral on nationalism. I don't like the fanatical and fascist versions of it, but your question wasn't about fascism or fanatical nationalism but simply if dividing people by nations is preferable to doing so by class.



Was nationalism ever socially *progressive*, in your estimation? Is it worthwhile *now*?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so you're confirming that you have no differences with Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development -- correct?



wat0n wrote:
Why does that happen according to Trotsky?



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're not answering my question. Go ahead and do your own research and get back to me, if you like.



wat0n wrote:
I want more details about what Trotsky believed. In reality, there can be many mutually competing explanations for the phenomenon.



Bon voyage.
#15176643
ckaihatsu wrote:'Predictions' -- ?

Now you're thinking of the *hard* sciences, which lend themselves to *clinical* work, and analysis, like making predictions over a known quantity of whatever.

Political economy, including Marx, is better situated as a 'soft' science, meaning that it's about *social history* -- which could be defined as the ongoing balance between the two opposing class forces. (See 'cooperation / competition' in the following diagram, which is 'social history'.)


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
Image



The social sciences use *inductive reasoning*, and not hard-science, clinical *deductive reasoning*:


inductive vs. deductive reasoning

Spoiler: show
Image


Using deductive reasoning does not mean that you can't come up with a model that makes predictions. For example, saying that fixing a very low price of a commodity will lead to scarcity of that commodity is a prediction even though it's not from the hard sciences or based on induction. Another example is the prediction of the tendency of the profit rate to fall (yes, this was a prediction at the time Das Kapital was written).

ckaihatsu wrote:Would the *market* allow for that, though, and, more to the point, what about the *existing* empirical supply of housing (vacant units) that isn't / can't be brought into the market economy because of the lack of people (who need housing) with money to *be included* in the market economy for housing -- ?


Yes, the market would most definitely would allow for that. But zoning laws don't allow it to adjust - and hey, we know that markets would allow for that because house construction greatly rose during the housing bubble, despite all the restrictions even.

As for your second question: Indeed, there will still be people who are too poor to afford homes. That's where social policy kicks in, but if you are concerned about that then the first step is to let the market incentives to build housing actually operate.

ckaihatsu wrote:'Simpler' -- ?

Really -- ? That's your standard for any given political economy implementation? That it just needs to be *simpler*?


Not the only one, but yes, if you want to implement something it will be easier to do if you keep it simple. Often, in fact, keeping things simple will be the only realistic way to actually implement whatever you want to implement.

ckaihatsu wrote:Here's the portion from the part from the excerpt that you missed:


And here's the one you missed:

United States

After the 2008 crisis, rigorous stress tests forced some banks to recapitalize. This may have prevented the phenomenon of zombie banks, but there is a possibility that zombie companies exist; their earnings are less than their interest expenses. Such companies are therefore incapable of making a profit, since all revenue is spent on repaying creditors and paying off expenses.[6]


ckaihatsu wrote:To sum up, I'm more interested in seeing that people *receive* the fruits of industrial mass production, like housing units / apartments, than I am with *how* those goods and services are produced.


And that's where you are wrong. The "how" can actually matter to determine whether people will actually receive the fruits of industrialization. The obvious example I can think about would be pollution.

ckaihatsu wrote:Again you're confusing *clinical* science with *social* science -- there's no 'burden of proof' in revolutionary socialism since the entire point is to supersede the (bourgeois) class divide.


That sounds like a religion. Even social sciences demand fulfilling a burden of proof.

ckaihatsu wrote:Any comment on the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, in terms of 'managing' the credit ratings agencies?


Another example of incompetence indeed, although in all fairness they had a tough job given they were rating the MBSs, and also given housing markets are very slow to adjust and therefore hard to predict.

ckaihatsu wrote:What you're referencing is the phenomenon of 'false consciousness'. It's not a perfect world....


Why does it happen and in what sense is it false?

ckaihatsu wrote:Was nationalism ever socially *progressive*, in your estimation? Is it worthwhile *now*?


It could be, depends. It's a category to appeal to a collective sentiment (class is another, and the other identity classes in general fall here), and that can be progressive if it encourages individuals to adopt socially valuable behavior such as e.g. being more willing to share with others in the ingroup and more generally be cooperative to better coordinate collective action. The problem however is that collectivism in general can also become very regressive when running amok and when it's not used to suppress others' freedoms - just like individualism in general can also become very regressive when running amok by making cooperation harder and, by extension, losing opportunities for collective action that can benefit society as a whole (i.e. be a tide that lifts all boats). I don't see why such collectivism based on nation could somehow be different.

ckaihatsu wrote:Bon voyage.


Okay, I was actually interested.
#15176721
ckaihatsu wrote:
'Predictions' -- ?

Now you're thinking of the *hard* sciences, which lend themselves to *clinical* work, and analysis, like making predictions over a known quantity of whatever.

Political economy, including Marx, is better situated as a 'soft' science, meaning that it's about *social history* -- which could be defined as the ongoing balance between the two opposing class forces. (See 'cooperation / competition' in the following diagram, which is 'social history'.)


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
Image



The social sciences use *inductive reasoning*, and not hard-science, clinical *deductive reasoning*:


inductive vs. deductive reasoning

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Using deductive reasoning does not mean that you can't come up with a model that makes predictions. For example, saying that fixing a very low price of a commodity will lead to scarcity of that commodity is a prediction even though it's not from the hard sciences or based on induction. Another example is the prediction of the tendency of the profit rate to fall (yes, this was a prediction at the time Das Kapital was written).



Sure, but the reason that social scientists tend *not* to make general, *categorical*, hard-science-type predictions -- as over future *events* -- is because such is the stuff of science-fiction. There are obviously too many *variables* to confidently extrapolate forward in time, though admittedly AI is gaining huge ground there.


https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube ... 79&bih=732


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're implying that the (real estate) market is *optimal*, though -- that *eventually* supply matches demand, and everything is hunky-dory. You're not even taking into account that people exist who *need* housing but *can't afford* it, and yet housing units are vacant and receiving *zero* dollars in revenue per month.

When it comes to the issue of housing and real estate you're satisfied to let the market rule, despite the 'externality' of homelessness existing as a result of this dogmatic adherence to the market mechanism.



wat0n wrote:
I think you are confusing short term and long term issues. What you mention about homelessness is largely a long term issue, one that would be solved by making building homes easier.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Would the *market* allow for that, though, and, more to the point, what about the *existing* empirical supply of housing (vacant units) that isn't / can't be brought into the market economy because of the lack of people (who need housing) with money to *be included* in the market economy for housing -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Yes, the market would most definitely would allow for that. But zoning laws don't allow it to adjust - and hey, we know that markets would allow for that because house construction greatly rose during the housing bubble, despite all the restrictions even.

As for your second question: Indeed, there will still be people who are too poor to afford homes. That's where social policy kicks in, but if you are concerned about that then the first step is to let the market incentives to build housing actually operate.



So let's hear more about how 'social policy kicks in' -- how would that happen, exactly, and why hasn't homelessness been eradicated yet with this kicking-in of social policy -- ?

Also, btw:


3D printing’s new challenge: Solving the US housing shortage

https://nypost.com/2021/04/28/3d-printi ... -shortage/


---


wat0n wrote:
But right now, it would be simpler to just give UBI over UBS.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Simpler' -- ?

Really -- ? That's your standard for any given political economy implementation? That it just needs to be *simpler*?



wat0n wrote:
Not the only one, but yes, if you want to implement something it will be easier to do if you keep it simple. Often, in fact, keeping things simple will be the only realistic way to actually implement whatever you want to implement.



Using *this* logic, you should be 100% for worldwide workers control of industrial mass production, because such is logistically *simpler*, by eliminating all finance and exchange values and private property. Cut out the capitalist middleman, is *my* political watchword.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's the portion from the part from the excerpt that you missed:


Banks become zombies due to bad loans which they have made.

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



wat0n wrote:
And here's the one you missed:


United States

After the 2008 crisis, rigorous stress tests forced some banks to recapitalize. This may have prevented the phenomenon of zombie banks, but there is a possibility that zombie companies exist; their earnings are less than their interest expenses. Such companies are therefore incapable of making a profit, since all revenue is spent on repaying creditors and paying off expenses.[6]



So the Wikipedia has conflicting or unclear language -- what *point* would you like to make here, that zombie *companies* are okay, but zombie *banks* aren't -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
To sum up, I'm more interested in seeing that people *receive* the fruits of industrial mass production, like housing units / apartments, than I am with *how* those goods and services are produced.



wat0n wrote:
And that's where you are wrong. The "how" can actually matter to determine whether people will actually receive the fruits of industrialization. The obvious example I can think about would be pollution.



Sorry, but I'm going to have to insist that the *results* need to take priority.

China comes to mind, actually, in that they've had to catch-up in their industrialization, and they decided to allow for *much* pollution -- as the Western countries had done in past centuries for themselves -- until they get to the point where they can then become 'greener', once their industries are soundly established and they can then 'mature' that way.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Again you're confusing *clinical* science with *social* science -- there's no 'burden of proof' in revolutionary socialism since the entire point is to supersede the (bourgeois) class divide.



wat0n wrote:
That sounds like a religion. Even social sciences demand fulfilling a burden of proof.



Hmmmm, if I recall correctly you've acknowledged the existence of the *class divide* in past exchanges on this thread, so it goes to follow that there's a *ruling* class, and an *oppressed* / subordinate class. By extension it goes to reason that the oppressed / working class has an objective empirical *interest* in no longer being subordinated and oppressed, so that's the reason for revolutionary socialism. Not a religion.


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Any comment on the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, in terms of 'managing' the credit ratings agencies?


Credit rating agencies (CRAs)—firms which rate debt instruments/securities according to the debtor's ability to pay lenders back—played a significant role at various stages in the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–2008 that led to the great recession of 2008–2009. The new, complex securities of "structured finance" used to finance subprime mortgages could not have been sold without ratings by the "Big Three" rating agencies—Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings. A large section of the debt securities market—many money markets and pension funds—were restricted in their bylaws to holding only the safest securities—i.e. securities the rating agencies designated "triple-A".[1] The pools of debt the agencies gave their highest ratings to [2] included over three trillion dollars of loans to homebuyers with bad credit and undocumented incomes through 2007.[3] Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of these triple-A securities were downgraded to "junk" status by 2010,[1][4][5] and the writedowns and losses came to over half a trillion dollars.[6][7] This led "to the collapse or disappearance" in 2008–09 of three major investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch), and the federal governments buying of $700 billion of bad debt from distressed financial institutions.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_ra ... ime_crisis



wat0n wrote:
Another example of incompetence indeed, although in all fairness they had a tough job given they were rating the MBSs, and also given housing markets are very slow to adjust and therefore hard to predict.



So you claim to not-be a market dogmatist, yet you're engaging in the blaming of *people* for what is clearly an objective, inherent *market* dynamic -- that of an oversupply of capital chasing after fewer and fewer investment opportunities, and so therefore increasingly willing to take riskier 'bets', such as with the subprime mortgages, while the credit rating agencies readily committed fraud due to the same financial-political pressures of where the market happened to be then.

If you continue to say that this was just a 'one-off', of 'mismanagement', then you're confirming that you definitely *are* a market dogmatist, because you'd rather denigrate *people* than admit that market dynamics (of encouraging the buying of bad debt) are a *systemic* problem.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What you're referencing is the phenomenon of 'false consciousness'. It's not a perfect world....



wat0n wrote:
Why does it happen and in what sense is it false?



Again, 'bon voyage' -- on anything that you're looking to discover for yourself.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Was nationalism ever socially *progressive*, in your estimation? Is it worthwhile *now*?



wat0n wrote:
It could be, depends. It's a category to appeal to a collective sentiment (class is another, and the other identity classes in general fall here), and that can be progressive if it encourages individuals to adopt socially valuable behavior such as e.g. being more willing to share with others in the ingroup and more generally be cooperative to better coordinate collective action. The problem however is that collectivism in general can also become very regressive when running amok and when it's not used to suppress others' freedoms - just like individualism in general can also become very regressive when running amok by making cooperation harder and, by extension, losing opportunities for collective action that can benefit society as a whole (i.e. be a tide that lifts all boats). I don't see why such collectivism based on nation could somehow be different.



Marxists look at the question *historically*, in terms of *when* the (initial) development of nation-states conferred a step-up in social organization, as over warring duchies in Europe, for example. This socio-political development was still *class-based*, though, so the toilers had to remain toiling, nonetheless.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Bon voyage.



wat0n wrote:
Okay, I was actually interested.
#15176725
ckaihatsu wrote:Sure, but the reason that social scientists tend *not* to make general, *categorical*, hard-science-type predictions -- as over future *events* -- is because such is the stuff of science-fiction. There are obviously too many *variables* to confidently extrapolate forward in time, though admittedly AI is gaining huge ground there.


https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube ... 79&bih=732


The tendency of the profit rate to fall is one such prediction :eh:

ckaihatsu wrote:So let's hear more about how 'social policy kicks in' -- how would that happen, exactly, and why hasn't homelessness been eradicated yet with this kicking-in of social policy -- ?

Also, btw:


3D printing’s new challenge: Solving the US housing shortage

https://nypost.com/2021/04/28/3d-printi ... -shortage/


Why hasn't it done so now? Precisely because building is hard, unless you want to send homeless people to rural areas. There are federal programs to fight homeless by the way.

Another reason is that having trouble to afford a home isn't the only reason for homelessness.

ckaihatsu wrote:Using *this* logic, you should be 100% for worldwide workers control of industrial mass production, because such is logistically *simpler*, by eliminating all finance and exchange values and private property. Cut out the capitalist middleman, is *my* political watchword.


No, it would actually be harder to do so that way. Prices help to coordinate productive decisions while exchange values are useful to avoid barter - which is logistically complicated as is. The middleman also plays a coordinating role, it's why brokers exist at all.

ckaihatsu wrote:So the Wikipedia has conflicting or unclear language -- what *point* would you like to make here, that zombie *companies* are okay, but zombie *banks* aren't -- ?


That the US bailouts didn't create zombie banks. I have made no comment about the European ones, those I think worked differently.

ckaihatsu wrote:Sorry, but I'm going to have to insist that the *results* need to take priority.

China comes to mind, actually, in that they've had to catch-up in their industrialization, and they decided to allow for *much* pollution -- as the Western countries had done in past centuries for themselves -- until they get to the point where they can then become 'greener', once their industries are soundly established and they can then 'mature' that way.


Well, you will have to talk to the environmentalists here. But do keep in mind that for instance China hasn't been able to solve all its environmental problems and its environmental laws I think are weaker than those in the West.

ckaihatsu wrote:Hmmmm, if I recall correctly you've acknowledged the existence of the *class divide* in past exchanges on this thread, so it goes to follow that there's a *ruling* class, and an *oppressed* / subordinate class. By extension it goes to reason that the oppressed / working class has an objective empirical *interest* in no longer being subordinated and oppressed, so that's the reason for revolutionary socialism. Not a religion.


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show
Image


The fact that such divide exist does not necessarily mean Revolution is necessary or desirable.

ckaihatsu wrote:So you claim to not-be a market dogmatist, yet you're engaging in the blaming of *people* for what is clearly an objective, inherent *market* dynamic -- that of an oversupply of capital chasing after fewer and fewer investment opportunities, and so therefore increasingly willing to take riskier 'bets', such as with the subprime mortgages, while the credit rating agencies readily committed fraud due to the same financial-political pressures of where the market happened to be then.

If you continue to say that this was just a 'one-off', of 'mismanagement', then you're confirming that you definitely *are* a market dogmatist, because you'd rather denigrate *people* than admit that market dynamics (of encouraging the buying of bad debt) are a *systemic* problem.


Where did I blame "people" there? You were asking about credit rating agencies, weren't you? I was talking about these businesses.

ckaihatsu wrote:Again, 'bon voyage' -- on anything that you're looking to discover for yourself.


That's not too helpful. Why don't you make your case? In particular, is every deviation from this Marxist ideal a case of false consciousness?

ckaihatsu wrote:Marxists look at the question *historically*, in terms of *when* the (initial) development of nation-states conferred a step-up in social organization, as over warring duchies in Europe, for example. This socio-political development was still *class-based*, though, so the toilers had to remain toiling, nonetheless.


Yes, Marxists hace their own particular view of history. But it would seem it fails to account for several relevant real world events and trends.
#15176840
ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, but the reason that social scientists tend *not* to make general, *categorical*, hard-science-type predictions -- as over future *events* -- is because such is the stuff of science-fiction. There are obviously too many *variables* to confidently extrapolate forward in time, though admittedly AI is gaining huge ground there.


https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube ... 79&bih=732



wat0n wrote:
The tendency of the profit rate to fall is one such prediction :eh:



Sure, if you like, though I'd say that it's *ongoing*, and has *been* ongoing for decades and centuries now.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So let's hear more about how 'social policy kicks in' -- how would that happen, exactly, and why hasn't homelessness been eradicated yet with this kicking-in of social policy -- ?

Also, btw:


3D printing’s new challenge: Solving the US housing shortage

https://nypost.com/2021/04/28/3d-printi ... -shortage/



wat0n wrote:
Why hasn't it done so now? Precisely because building is hard, unless you want to send homeless people to rural areas. There are federal programs to fight homeless by the way.

Another reason is that having trouble to afford a home isn't the only reason for homelessness.



You make it sound like a *logistical* and *funding* challenge, yet there are *militaries* that can house and feed entire *regiments* while they're on foot thousands of miles from home.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Using *this* logic, you should be 100% for worldwide workers control of industrial mass production, because such is logistically *simpler*, by eliminating all finance and exchange values and private property. Cut out the capitalist middleman, is *my* political watchword.



wat0n wrote:
No, it would actually be harder to do so that way. Prices help to coordinate productive decisions while exchange values are useful to avoid barter - which is logistically complicated as is. The middleman also plays a coordinating role, it's why brokers exist at all.



*Or*, we could ask why *retail* even exists at all -- now, with online shopping, people more-or-less get the products shipped directly from the manufacturer, so we know it can be done.

The cost to the manufacturer is for the material *inputs*, from supply chains, to produce the product, and that's it -- no 'exchanges' needed, no markup, no marketing, no advertising, etc.

Communism doesn't require or use exchange values whatsoever, and no private property, and no finance -- it's best described as free-access and direct-distribution.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So the Wikipedia has conflicting or unclear language -- what *point* would you like to make here, that zombie *companies* are okay, but zombie *banks* aren't -- ?



wat0n wrote:
That the US bailouts didn't create zombie banks. I have made no comment about the European ones, those I think worked differently.



And now what about zombie *companies* -- here's the *cost* of that, to the public:



But with inflation on the rise, the issue of how long the Fed should continue to buy up financial assets at the rate of $120 billion per month will no doubt be raised at next week’s meeting.



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... l-j12.html



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
To sum up, I'm more interested in seeing that people *receive* the fruits of industrial mass production, like housing units / apartments, than I am with *how* those goods and services are produced.



wat0n wrote:
And that's where you are wrong. The "how" can actually matter to determine whether people will actually receive the fruits of industrialization. The obvious example I can think about would be pollution.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Sorry, but I'm going to have to insist that the *results* need to take priority.

China comes to mind, actually, in that they've had to catch-up in their industrialization, and they decided to allow for *much* pollution -- as the Western countries had done in past centuries for themselves -- until they get to the point where they can then become 'greener', once their industries are soundly established and they can then 'mature' that way.



wat0n wrote:
Well, you will have to talk to the environmentalists here. But do keep in mind that for instance China hasn't been able to solve all its environmental problems and its environmental laws I think are weaker than those in the West.



So which is more important, then -- the benefits of industrialization, or the (environmental) costs of industrial pollution -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Hmmmm, if I recall correctly you've acknowledged the existence of the *class divide* in past exchanges on this thread, so it goes to follow that there's a *ruling* class, and an *oppressed* / subordinate class. By extension it goes to reason that the oppressed / working class has an objective empirical *interest* in no longer being subordinated and oppressed, so that's the reason for revolutionary socialism. Not a religion.


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
The fact that such divide exist does not necessarily mean Revolution is necessary or desirable.



Well how is the oppressed working class supposed to get out of being subordinated by the world's *ruling* class? It's the *ruling* class that owns everything, like factories, in particular.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Any comment on the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, in terms of 'managing' the credit ratings agencies?


Credit rating agencies (CRAs)—firms which rate debt instruments/securities according to the debtor's ability to pay lenders back—played a significant role at various stages in the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–2008 that led to the great recession of 2008–2009. The new, complex securities of "structured finance" used to finance subprime mortgages could not have been sold without ratings by the "Big Three" rating agencies—Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings. A large section of the debt securities market—many money markets and pension funds—were restricted in their bylaws to holding only the safest securities—i.e. securities the rating agencies designated "triple-A".[1] The pools of debt the agencies gave their highest ratings to [2] included over three trillion dollars of loans to homebuyers with bad credit and undocumented incomes through 2007.[3] Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of these triple-A securities were downgraded to "junk" status by 2010,[1][4][5] and the writedowns and losses came to over half a trillion dollars.[6][7] This led "to the collapse or disappearance" in 2008–09 of three major investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch), and the federal governments buying of $700 billion of bad debt from distressed financial institutions.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_ra ... ime_crisis



wat0n wrote:
Another example of incompetence indeed, although in all fairness they had a tough job given they were rating the MBSs, and also given housing markets are very slow to adjust and therefore hard to predict.



ckaihatsu wrote:
So you claim to not-be a market dogmatist, yet you're engaging in the blaming of *people* for what is clearly an objective, inherent *market* dynamic -- that of an oversupply of capital chasing after fewer and fewer investment opportunities, and so therefore increasingly willing to take riskier 'bets', such as with the subprime mortgages, while the credit rating agencies readily committed fraud due to the same financial-political pressures of where the market happened to be then.

If you continue to say that this was just a 'one-off', of 'mismanagement', then you're confirming that you definitely *are* a market dogmatist, because you'd rather denigrate *people* than admit that market dynamics (of encouraging the buying of bad debt) are a *systemic* problem.



wat0n wrote:
Where did I blame "people" there? You were asking about credit rating agencies, weren't you? I was talking about these businesses.



You said the subprime mortgage crisis was due to 'incompetence', which implies *personnel*, and not the system itself. Yet capitalism has these crises *regularly* -- it just had one in 2020, which required government bailouts, this time due to the unforeseen coronavirus pandemic.

My point stands that because you'd rather blame *people* / human judgment, and not the capitalist system itself (market dynamics), that makes you a *market dogmatist*. You're *covering* for the inadequate functioning of the markets, as in the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, by blaming *people*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, 'bon voyage' -- on anything that you're looking to discover for yourself.



wat0n wrote:
That's not too helpful. Why don't you make your case? In particular, is every deviation from this Marxist ideal a case of false consciousness?



'Make my case' -- ??

I don't think you understand how this works -- I'm not here to *cater* to your intellectual proclivities, whatever they may be. If you have to journey-off to find some info that you're looking for, you go ahead and do that.

This space is appropriate for any 'points' you may have to make, and for me to respond, as we've been doing.


Ideologies & Operations -- Bottom Up

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Marxists look at the question *historically*, in terms of *when* the (initial) development of nation-states conferred a step-up in social organization, as over warring duchies in Europe, for example. This socio-political development was still *class-based*, though, so the toilers had to remain toiling, nonetheless.



wat0n wrote:
Yes, Marxists hace their own particular view of history. But it would seem it fails to account for several relevant real world events and trends.



Okay, like what -- I'm listening.
#15176902
ckaihatsu wrote:Sure, if you like, though I'd say that it's *ongoing*, and has *been* ongoing for decades and centuries now.


We already saw it's not.

ckaihatsu wrote:You make it sound like a *logistical* and *funding* challenge, yet there are *militaries* that can house and feed entire *regiments* while they're on foot thousands of miles from home.


It's a legal problem, not a logistical one.

ckaihatsu wrote:*Or*, we could ask why *retail* even exists at all -- now, with online shopping, people more-or-less get the products shipped directly from the manufacturer, so we know it can be done.

The cost to the manufacturer is for the material *inputs*, from supply chains, to produce the product, and that's it -- no 'exchanges' needed, no markup, no marketing, no advertising, etc.

Communism doesn't require or use exchange values whatsoever, and no private property, and no finance -- it's best described as free-access and direct-distribution.


Well, physical retail is in fact experiencing its own kind of apocalypse. But an online retailer makes sense insofar it can make online shopping easier.

Also, physical retail is still useful for e.g. buying clothes, where you may want to try them on.

ckaihatsu wrote:And now what about zombie *companies* -- here's the *cost* of that, to the public:


That's macroeconomic stabilization and affects the economy as a whole. They are not just handing out money to zombie companies :eh:

I would think a Marxist would agree with this, given Marx's advocacy for a government-owned Central Bank.

ckaihatsu wrote:So which is more important, then -- the benefits of industrialization, or the (environmental) costs of industrial pollution -- ?


The former, but the latter are not irrelevant. Shouldn't they be at least of some concern?

ckaihatsu wrote:Well how is the oppressed working class supposed to get out of being subordinated by the world's *ruling* class? It's the *ruling* class that owns everything, like factories, in particular.


Incrementalism is a thing, you know.

ckaihatsu wrote:You said the subprime mortgage crisis was due to 'incompetence', which implies *personnel*, and not the system itself. Yet capitalism has these crises *regularly* -- it just had one in 2020, which required government bailouts, this time due to the unforeseen coronavirus pandemic.

My point stands that because you'd rather blame *people* / human judgment, and not the capitalist system itself (market dynamics), that makes you a *market dogmatist*. You're *covering* for the inadequate functioning of the markets, as in the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, by blaming *people*.


Why didn't other countries have similar problems? I'm thinking about, for instance, Canada.

ckaihatsu wrote:'Make my case' -- ??

I don't think you understand how this works -- I'm not here to *cater* to your intellectual proclivities, whatever they may be. If you have to journey-off to find some info that you're looking for, you go ahead and do that.

This space is appropriate for any 'points' you may have to make, and for me to respond, as we've been doing.


Ideologies & Operations -- Bottom Up

Spoiler: show
Image


This is an evasive response. Is every deviation from Marxist ideals a case of false consciousness? Aren't you reifying the Marxian paradigm?

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, like what -- I'm listening.


See nationalism motivating working classes to serve their national armies in WWI for an example, as above. Another one would be why did the USSR eventually turn to Stalinism and furthermore why did the Soviets were able to reach a modus vivendi with the Orthodox Church.
#15176978
wat0n wrote:
The tendency of the profit rate to fall is one such prediction :eh:



ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, if you like, though I'd say that it's *ongoing*, and has *been* ongoing for decades and centuries now.



wat0n wrote:
We already saw it's not.



It *has*, and it has to do with the organic composition of capital -- as labor gets increasingly *leveraged*, a commodity produced has a lesser and lesser portion of it due to *labor power*. (Consider a hand-made item versus a plastic soda bottle.)

So increased mechanization / reduced human labor means that industrial mass production approaches the point of *full automation*, at which point it becomes like a 'hobby' (my phrasing) because *anyone* knows how to get the stuff they need for their hobby, to produce stuff.

And, of course, if anyone can produce anything they need through hobby-type procurements then there are *zero* profits to be made from the manufacture of the stuff, because *anyone* can produce the stuff for *themselves* -- consider computational power today, versus scheduling time on a mainframe decades ago.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You make it sound like a *logistical* and *funding* challenge, yet there are *militaries* that can house and feed entire *regiments* while they're on foot thousands of miles from home.



wat0n wrote:
It's a legal problem, not a logistical one.



If it's not a logistical or a funding problem then why does homelessness continue to be an outstanding social issue? Isn't ending government support for killer cops and housing un-housed people worthwhile enough, at least as much as military spending, to actually *accomplish* -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
*Or*, we could ask why *retail* even exists at all -- now, with online shopping, people more-or-less get the products shipped directly from the manufacturer, so we know it can be done.

The cost to the manufacturer is for the material *inputs*, from supply chains, to produce the product, and that's it -- no 'exchanges' needed, no markup, no marketing, no advertising, etc.

Communism doesn't require or use exchange values whatsoever, and no private property, and no finance -- it's best described as free-access and direct-distribution.



wat0n wrote:
Well, physical retail is in fact experiencing its own kind of apocalypse. But an online retailer makes sense insofar it can make online shopping easier.

Also, physical retail is still useful for e.g. buying clothes, where you may want to try them on.



So you're not actually attached to the practice of capitalism's middling *exchanges*, then -- most products *could* be readily supplied directly to the consumer from the manufacturer.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
And now what about zombie *companies* -- here's the *cost* of that, to the public:


But with inflation on the rise, the issue of how long the Fed should continue to buy up financial assets at the rate of $120 billion per month will no doubt be raised at next week’s meeting.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... l-j12.html



wat0n wrote:
That's macroeconomic stabilization and affects the economy as a whole. They are not just handing out money to zombie companies :eh:



At this point I really don't see any difference -- propping up companies, with the government underwriting of their bad debt, just encourages irresponsible fiscal management, and ongoing public support for zombie companies, all for the sake of saying that the sky won't fall today.


wat0n wrote:
I would think a Marxist would agree with this, given Marx's advocacy for a government-owned Central Bank.



I think you're misunderstanding -- you're conflating full *Stalinist-type* bureaucratic administration, with present-day capitalist-financial central banking.

Note that at least Stalinism doesn't have *private property* and doesn't export finance capital, which bourgeois governments *do*, and thus they're *capitalist* and *imperialist*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So which is more important, then -- the benefits of industrialization, or the (environmental) costs of industrial pollution -- ?



wat0n wrote:
The former, but the latter are not irrelevant. Shouldn't they be at least of some concern?



Of course they're of concern, and I'd rather breathe clean air, myself.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well how is the oppressed working class supposed to get out of being subordinated by the world's *ruling* class? It's the *ruling* class that owns everything, like factories, in particular.



wat0n wrote:
Incrementalism is a thing, you know.



Would you tell Julian Assange to 'incrementally' get out of prison?

Why should *anyone* tolerate an extended, delayed 'incrementalism', instead of justice itself -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You said the subprime mortgage crisis was due to 'incompetence', which implies *personnel*, and not the system itself. Yet capitalism has these crises *regularly* -- it just had one in 2020, which required government bailouts, this time due to the unforeseen coronavirus pandemic.

My point stands that because you'd rather blame *people* / human judgment, and not the capitalist system itself (market dynamics), that makes you a *market dogmatist*. You're *covering* for the inadequate functioning of the markets, as in the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, by blaming *people*.



wat0n wrote:
Why didn't other countries have similar problems? I'm thinking about, for instance, Canada.



Please let us know when you find out.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Make my case' -- ??

I don't think you understand how this works -- I'm not here to *cater* to your intellectual proclivities, whatever they may be. If you have to journey-off to find some info that you're looking for, you go ahead and do that.

This space is appropriate for any 'points' you may have to make, and for me to respond, as we've been doing.


Ideologies & Operations -- Bottom Up

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
This is an evasive response. Is every deviation from Marxist ideals a case of false consciousness? Aren't you reifying the Marxian paradigm?



Again, I'm not *obligated* to entertain your intellectual pathfinding. If you have nothing to say, you can say it *elsewhere*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Marxists look at the question *historically*, in terms of *when* the (initial) development of nation-states conferred a step-up in social organization, as over warring duchies in Europe, for example. This socio-political development was still *class-based*, though, so the toilers had to remain toiling, nonetheless.



wat0n wrote:
Yes, Marxists hace their own particular view of history. But it would seem it fails to account for several relevant real world events and trends.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, like what -- I'm listening.



wat0n wrote:
See nationalism motivating working classes to serve their national armies in WWI for an example, as above.



I'd call that 'mass media'. (Ever see 'All Quiet on the Western Front'?)


wat0n wrote:
Another one would be why did the USSR eventually turn to Stalinism



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


wat0n wrote:
and furthermore why did the Soviets were able to reach a modus vivendi with the Orthodox Church.



Dunno, but offhand I'd say it was due to the forced degeneration of the initial revolutionary policies:



• All private property was nationalized by the government.

• All Russian banks were nationalized.

• Private bank accounts were expropriated.

• The properties of the Russian Orthodox Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated.

• All foreign debts were repudiated.

• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.

• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.



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




---


Also, speaking of Mussolini, there's currently a power vacuum in Haiti that's allowing the rise of ultra-nationalism:


Haiti's Political Crisis Plunges Its Capital Into Chaos

#15177007
ckaihatsu wrote:It *has*, and it has to do with the organic composition of capital -- as labor gets increasingly *leveraged*, a commodity produced has a lesser and lesser portion of it due to *labor power*. (Consider a hand-made item versus a plastic soda bottle.)

So increased mechanization / reduced human labor means that industrial mass production approaches the point of *full automation*, at which point it becomes like a 'hobby' (my phrasing) because *anyone* knows how to get the stuff they need for their hobby, to produce stuff.

And, of course, if anyone can produce anything they need through hobby-type procurements then there are *zero* profits to be made from the manufacture of the stuff, because *anyone* can produce the stuff for *themselves* -- consider computational power today, versus scheduling time on a mainframe decades ago.


I'm referring to the empirical literature on the matter. Normally, one would prefer to base his politics on that kind of thing.

ckaihatsu wrote:If it's not a logistical or a funding problem then why does homelessness continue to be an outstanding social issue? Isn't ending government support for killer cops and housing un-housed people worthwhile enough, at least as much as military spending, to actually *accomplish* -- ?


What makes you believe there is a significant support for building more houing in many urban areas? In particular, since that would mean densifying cities and affecting quality of life.

ckaihatsu wrote:So you're not actually attached to the practice of capitalism's middling *exchanges*, then -- most products *could* be readily supplied directly to the consumer from the manufacturer.


Sure, but it's more convenient to be able to shop and compare in the same website, and such retailer could also be more efficient in terms of economies of scale and scope in delivery/transportation

ckaihatsu wrote:At this point I really don't see any difference -- propping up companies, with the government underwriting of their bad debt, just encourages irresponsible fiscal management, and ongoing public support for zombie companies, all for the sake of saying that the sky won't fall today.


You sound like a libertarian. Countercyclical policy and propping up zombies are most certainly not the same thing.

ckaihatsu wrote:I think you're misunderstanding -- you're conflating full *Stalinist-type* bureaucratic administration, with present-day capitalist-financial central banking.

Note that at least Stalinism doesn't have *private property* and doesn't export finance capital, which bourgeois governments *do*, and thus they're *capitalist* and *imperialist*.


I'm referring to what Marx himself advocated for. You could claim it was an intermediate stage thing, though.

ckaihatsu wrote:Of course they're of concern, and I'd rather breathe clean air, myself.


Indeed.

ckaihatsu wrote:Would you tell Julian Assange to 'incrementally' get out of prison?

Why should *anyone* tolerate an extended, delayed 'incrementalism', instead of justice itself -- ?


Because revolution need not be just, actually.

ckaihatsu wrote:Please let us know when you find out.


I'm curious to learn about your explanation. Canada for instance had and still has a different banking regulatory framework from that the US had by 2008.

ckaihatsu wrote:Again, I'm not *obligated* to entertain your intellectual pathfinding. If you have nothing to say, you can say it *elsewhere*.


So you are in fact reifying the Marxian paradigm. Bad idea.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'd call that 'mass media'. (Ever see 'All Quiet on the Western Front'?)


Why did workers fall for mass media?

ckaihatsu wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War


That had already been over several years prior to Stalin's rise to power.

ckaihatsu wrote:Dunno, but offhand I'd say it was due to the forced degeneration of the initial revolutionary policies:


Could it be that the Orthodox Church was a referent for many Russians and thus coopting was actually valuable for the Soviets?
#15177031
ckaihatsu wrote:
It *has*, and it has to do with the organic composition of capital -- as labor gets increasingly *leveraged*, a commodity produced has a lesser and lesser portion of it due to *labor power*. (Consider a hand-made item versus a plastic soda bottle.)

So increased mechanization / reduced human labor means that industrial mass production approaches the point of *full automation*, at which point it becomes like a 'hobby' (my phrasing) because *anyone* knows how to get the stuff they need for their hobby, to produce stuff.

And, of course, if anyone can produce anything they need through hobby-type procurements then there are *zero* profits to be made from the manufacture of the stuff, because *anyone* can produce the stuff for *themselves* -- consider computational power today, versus scheduling time on a mainframe decades ago.



wat0n wrote:
I'm referring to the empirical literature on the matter. Normally, one would prefer to base his politics on that kind of thing.



I'm sorry that you're not accepting my points / arguments on the topic of declining rate of profit, but if all you're doing is *ignoring* falling prices (in a mature, oversaturated market), overproduction, market saturation, and declining rates of profit, I can't do anything about that.

I just provided *another* way of seeing it, by describing *endpoints*, but you're not addressing any content here.

You've *acknowledged* falling prices in previous posts, *and* you've noted that Okishio is only applicable on a *temporary* basis.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If it's not a logistical or a funding problem then why does homelessness continue to be an outstanding social issue? Isn't ending government support for killer cops and housing un-housed people worthwhile enough, at least as much as military spending, to actually *accomplish* -- ?



wat0n wrote:
What makes you believe there is a significant support for building more houing in many urban areas? In particular, since that would mean densifying cities and affecting quality of life.



Are you a Malthusian -- ? Do you really think that *overpopulation* is a social problem?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're not actually attached to the practice of capitalism's middling *exchanges*, then -- most products *could* be readily supplied directly to the consumer from the manufacturer.



wat0n wrote:
Sure, but it's more convenient to be able to shop and compare in the same website, and such retailer could also be more efficient in terms of economies of scale and scope in delivery/transportation



Okay, since you're in *partial* agreement, I'll just reiterate that that proves 'direct distribution' (from the manufacturer to the consumer) is logistically possible, meaning that capitalist exchange values are no longer logistically required for a realistic post-capitalist political economy.

If you *agree* then your politics would be for *nationalization* at least, as recently spelled-out at another thread:


Is Bolshevik Communism really Marxist

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=180496


---


wat0n wrote:
That's macroeconomic stabilization and affects the economy as a whole. They are not just handing out money to zombie companies :eh:



ckaihatsu wrote:
At this point I really don't see any difference -- propping up companies, with the government underwriting of their bad debt, just encourages irresponsible fiscal management, and ongoing public support for zombie companies, all for the sake of saying that the sky won't fall today.



wat0n wrote:
You sound like a libertarian. Countercyclical policy and propping up zombies are most certainly not the same thing.



No, not a libertarian, because I have no (class) interest in seeing the continuation of the capitalist / market system. I guess I *do* share some common ground with the libertarian position on wanting to let the markets fail entirely, if that's what they're prone to do. My politics would call for the *workers* to then run social production without the capitalist market 'software' (economy) functioning anymore.

You'll have to denote what 'countercyclical policy' is, but I suspect that current government underwriting of corporate bad debt is the current *implementation* of 'countercyclical policy'.

Here's a refresher from that previous Wikipedia entry:



Record debt purchases in April

Between 1 January and 3 May, a record $807.1 billion of U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds were issued.[91] Similarly, U.S. corporations sold over $300 billion in debt in April 2020, a new record. This included Boeing, which sold $25 billion in bonds, stating that it would no longer need a bailout from the U.S. government.[92] Apple, which borrowed $8.5 billion potentially to pay back the $8 billion in debt coming due later in 2020; Starbucks, which raised $3 billion.;[91] Ford, which sold $8 billion in junk-rated bonds despite just losing its investment rating; and cruise line operator Carnival, which increased its offering to $4 billion to meet demand.[93] The main reasons for the lively market are the low interest rates and the Fed's actions to ensure market liquidity. The iShares iBoxx USD Investment Grade Corporate Bond, an exchange-traded fund with assets directly benefiting from Fed actions, grew by a third between March 11 and the end of April.[94] However, companies are growing increasingly leveraged as they increase their debt while earnings fall. Through the end of April 2020, investment-grade corporate bonds gained 1.4% versus Treasury bonds' 8.9%, indicating potential investor wariness about the risk of corporate bonds. Morgan Stanley estimated 2020 U.S. investment-grade bond issuance at $1.4 trillion, around 2017's record, while Barclays estimated the non-financial corporations will need to borrow $125–175 billion in additional debt to cover the drop in earnings from the pandemic recession.[92] Warren Buffett noted that the terms offered by the Fed were far better than those that Berkshire Hathaway could offer.[95]



On 9 May, Goldman Sachs warned that U.S. investors may be overestimating the Fed guarantees to junk-rated debt. Between 9 April and 4 May, the two largest junk exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF and the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, respectively received $1.6 billion and $4.71 billion in net inflows. However, Goldman cautioned that even the BB-rated bonds that make up half of these two ETF's portfolios are likely to experience further downgrades. State Street Global Advisors commented on the distortions being created by the Fed's implicit guarantee: "The disconnect between the underlying fundamentals of bond issuers and bond prices is tough to reconcile."[102]

On 12 May, the Fed began buying corporate bond ETFs for the first time in its history. It stated its intention to buy bonds directly "in the near future". As companies must prove that they can not otherwise access normal credit to be eligible for the primary market facility, analysts opined that it may create a stigma for companies and be little used. However, the guarantee of a Fed backstop appears to have ensured market liquidity.[103]

In its annual review on 14 May, the Bank of Canada concluded that its three interest rate cuts in March and first ever bond buying program had succeeded in stabilizing Canadian markets. However, it expressed concern about the ability of the energy sector to refinance its debt given historically low oil prices. About C$17 billion in Canadian corporate bonds was sold in April 2020, one of the largest volumes since 2010.[104]

On 15 May, J. C. Penney filed for bankruptcy. It followed the filings of Neiman Marcus and J.Crew, but was the largest U.S. retailer to file by far.[105]

On 22 May, The Hertz Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This bankruptcy allows them to continue operations as a company, while attempting to work out some form of a deal between them and their creditors.[106]

On 5 August, Virgin Atlantic filed for bankruptcy.[107]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate ... s_in_April



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I think you're misunderstanding -- you're conflating full *Stalinist-type* bureaucratic administration, with present-day capitalist-financial central banking.

Note that at least Stalinism doesn't have *private property* and doesn't export finance capital, which bourgeois governments *do*, and thus they're *capitalist* and *imperialist*.



wat0n wrote:
I'm referring to what Marx himself advocated for. You could claim it was an intermediate stage thing, though.



No, my understanding of it is that it's a *Stalinism*-type thing -- or a *workers state* thing, as a socialist transition to overthrow the bourgeoisie, on the road to communism.

Take a look back at this prior segment:


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're not actually attached to the practice of capitalism's middling *exchanges*, then -- most products *could* be readily supplied directly to the consumer from the manufacturer.



wat0n wrote:
Sure, but it's more convenient to be able to shop and compare in the same website, and such retailer could also be more efficient in terms of economies of scale and scope in delivery/transportation



In this scenario, without the need for *retail*-type parceling-up of wholesale inventories, what you're describing is basically *word-of-mouth*, or blogging and YouTube-type *opinionating* about the market, because in the end the consumer would just order what they want, perhaps with a preference for a manufacturer within their own *continent*.

And how would those manufacturers build their factories in the first place, and hire labor, and pay for operational expenses -- ? That's where nationalization and Marx's 'central banking' come into play, since a global centralized allocation of productive *priorities*, without the market mechanism, would be what we're talking about at this point.




---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Of course they're of concern, and I'd rather breathe clean air, myself.



wat0n wrote:
Indeed.



And now it's a left-leaning jobs-market portal. Congratulations. (grin)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well how is the oppressed working class supposed to get out of being subordinated by the world's *ruling* class? It's the *ruling* class that owns everything, like factories, in particular.



wat0n wrote:
Incrementalism is a thing, you know.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Would you tell Julian Assange to 'incrementally' get out of prison?

Why should *anyone* tolerate an extended, delayed 'incrementalism', instead of justice itself -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Because revolution need not be just, actually.



What kind of a revolution are *you* indicating here -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Please let us know when you find out.



wat0n wrote:
I'm curious to learn about your explanation. Canada for instance had and still has a different banking regulatory framework from that the US had by 2008.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rec ... cas#Canada


You're welcome. Now you're down to *two* wishes. (grin)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, I'm not *obligated* to entertain your intellectual pathfinding. If you have nothing to say, you can say it *elsewhere*.



wat0n wrote:
So you are in fact reifying the Marxian paradigm. Bad idea.



Uh-oh. (grin)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'd call that 'mass media'. (Ever see 'All Quiet on the Western Front'?)



wat0n wrote:
Why did workers fall for mass media?



The mass media is a form of *power*, you know:


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


---


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



wat0n wrote:
That had already been over several years prior to Stalin's rise to power.



I maintain that it had a lasting deleterious effect on the economy that enabled Stalin to rise to power, and to consolidate.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Dunno, but offhand I'd say it was due to the forced degeneration of the initial revolutionary policies:


• All private property was nationalized by the government.

• All Russian banks were nationalized.

• Private bank accounts were expropriated.

• The properties of the Russian Orthodox Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated.

• All foreign debts were repudiated.

• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.

• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.

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



wat0n wrote:
Could it be that the Orthodox Church was a referent for many Russians and thus coopting was actually valuable for the Soviets?



No, I wouldn't agree -- they were political *rivals*.
#15177032
ckaihatsu wrote:I'm sorry that you're not accepting my points / arguments on the topic of declining rate of profit, but if all you're doing is *ignoring* falling prices (in a mature, oversaturated market), overproduction, market saturation, and declining rates of profit, I can't do anything about that.

I just provided *another* way of seeing it, by describing *endpoints*, but you're not addressing any content here.

You've *acknowledged* falling prices in previous posts, *and* you've noted that Okishio is only applicable on a *temporary* basis.


But that doesn't mean there is actually a tendency of the profit rate to fall. In the data, at least, what you see is that it tends to reach a long run level, not fall indefinitely.

ckaihatsu wrote:Are you a Malthusian -- ? Do you really think that *overpopulation* is a social problem?


No, I'm not a Malthusian, but you can't deny there are some areas that are very desirable for the population while others simply are not. And densification of the former will make them less desirable for its residents given the congestion issues that go along with it.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, since you're in *partial* agreement, I'll just reiterate that that proves 'direct distribution' (from the manufacturer to the consumer) is logistically possible, meaning that capitalist exchange values are no longer logistically required for a realistic post-capitalist political economy.

If you *agree* then your politics would be for *nationalization* at least, as recently spelled-out at another thread:


Is Bolshevik Communism really Marxist

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=180496


Certainly, you can have a badly functioning centrally planned economy like the communist bloc had back in the Cold War. But wouldn't we prefer to have a more efficient economy?

ckaihatsu wrote:No, not a libertarian, because I have no (class) interest in seeing the continuation of the capitalist / market system. I guess I *do* share some common ground with the libertarian position on wanting to let the markets fail entirely, if that's what they're prone to do. My politics would call for the *workers* to then run social production without the capitalist market 'software' (economy) functioning anymore.

You'll have to denote what 'countercyclical policy' is, but I suspect that current government underwriting of corporate bad debt is the current *implementation* of 'countercyclical policy'.

Here's a refresher from that previous Wikipedia entry:


You may want to read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procyclic ... _variables

ckaihatsu wrote:No, my understanding of it is that it's a *Stalinism*-type thing -- or a *workers state* thing, as a socialist transition to overthrow the bourgeoisie, on the road to communism.

Take a look back at this prior segment:

In this scenario, without the need for *retail*-type parceling-up of wholesale inventories, what you're describing is basically *word-of-mouth*, or blogging and YouTube-type *opinionating* about the market, because in the end the consumer would just order what they want, perhaps with a preference for a manufacturer within their own *continent*.

And how would those manufacturers build their factories in the first place, and hire labor, and pay for operational expenses -- ? That's where nationalization and Marx's 'central banking' come into play, since a global centralized allocation of productive *priorities*, without the market mechanism, would be what we're talking about at this point.


I don't think it's quite the same as word of mouth, honestly. Word of mouth will serve as a complement to advertising, but a retailer does a lot more than just that. For starters, you can actually buy the product at hand from the retailer.

ckaihatsu wrote:What kind of a revolution are *you* indicating here -- ?


The kind where the Terror leads to mass killings.

ckaihatsu wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rec ... cas#Canada


You're welcome. Now you're down to *two* wishes. (grin)


What's your point here? Yes, Canada had a recession but due to the drop in the global economic activity. It didn't face a banking crisis like the US and some European countries did.

ckaihatsu wrote:Uh-oh. (grin).


It means you can get caught with your pants down when Marxism turns to be wrong.

ckaihatsu wrote:The mass media is a form of *power*, you know:


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


So?

ckaihatsu wrote:I maintain that it had a lasting deleterious effect on the economy that enabled Stalin to rise to power, and to consolidate.


My understanding is that the Allies simply gave up and decided to contain.

ckaihatsu wrote:No, I wouldn't agree -- they were political *rivals*.


Then why did the Soviets allow it to operate again?
#15177072
ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm sorry that you're not accepting my points / arguments on the topic of declining rate of profit, but if all you're doing is *ignoring* falling prices (in a mature, oversaturated market), overproduction, market saturation, and declining rates of profit, I can't do anything about that.

I just provided *another* way of seeing it, by describing *endpoints*, but you're not addressing any content here.

You've *acknowledged* falling prices in previous posts, *and* you've noted that Okishio is only applicable on a *temporary* basis.



wat0n wrote:
But that doesn't mean there is actually a tendency of the profit rate to fall. In the data, at least, what you see is that it tends to reach a long run level, not fall indefinitely.



Here -- I found this....



The McKinsey Global Institute claimed in 2016 that the three decades from 1985 to 2014 were the golden years for profits from stocks and bonds, but forecasts that average profitability will be lower in the future.[93]

In May 2018, a Wall Street Journal analyst concluded that if taxcut effects are removed from the figures, real US corporate profits were not growing anymore, notwithstanding a surge in profits on S&P listed shares. Another analyst commented that "With the profits data, it could take several quarters for clear trends to emerge from the tax-associated noise."[94] From September 2018 onward, as the economic and political news worsened, the bloated US stockmarkets began to deflate, while the VIX index trebled.[95] In November 2018, Michael Wursthorn reported that "The postcrisis boom in U.S. corporate profits may be near its peak."[96] CNBC reported a similar story.[97] At the end of 2018, the record gains for the year by the 500 richest people listed on the daily Bloomberg Billionaires Index had been wiped out – together, they had lost more than half a trillion dollars of net wealth.[98]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_ ... it_to_fall



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, I'm not a Malthusian, but you can't deny there are some areas that are very desirable for the population while others simply are not. And densification of the former will make them less desirable for its residents given the congestion issues that go along with it.



So this is really more of a *wealth distribution* issue, then -- yeah, I realized some time ago that I hadn't even heard of a good *revolutionary* approach to the question, so I developed one. (The sample scenario is 'Who gets to attend an outdoor concert'.)



'additive prioritizations'

Better, I think, would be an approach that is more routine and less time-sensitive in prioritizing among responders -- the thing that would differentiate demand would be people's *own* prioritizations, in relation to *all other* possibilities for demands. This means that only those most focused on Product 'X' or Event 'Y', to the abandonment of all else (relatively speaking), over several iterations (days), would be seen as 'most-wanting' of it, for ultimate receipt.

My 'communist supply and demand' model, fortunately, uses this approach as a matter of course:

consumption [demand] -- Every person in a locality has a standard, one-through-infinity ranking system of political demands available to them, updated daily

consumption [demand] -- Basic human needs will be assigned a higher political priority by individuals and will emerge as mass demands at the cumulative scale -- desires will benefit from political organizing efforts and coordination

consumption [demand] -- A regular, routine system of mass individual political demand pooling -- as with spreadsheet templates and email -- must be in continuous operation so as to aggregate cumulative demands into the political process

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1174


I'm also realizing that this model / method of demand-prioritization can be used in such a way as to lend relative *weight* to a person's bid for any given product or calendar event, if there happens to be a limited supply and a more-intensive prioritization ('rationing') is called-for by the objective situation:

Since everyone has a standard one-through-infinity template to use on a daily basis for all political and/or economic demands, this template lends itself to consumer-political-type *organizing* in the case that such is necessary -- someone's 'passion' for a particular demand could be formally demonstrated by their recruiting of *others* to direct one or several of *their* ranking slots, for as many days / iterations as they like, to the person who is trying to beat-out others for the limited quantity.

Recall:

[A]ggregating these lists, by ranking (#1, #2, #3, etc.), is *no big deal* for any given computer. What we would want to see is what the rankings are for milk and steel, by rank position. So how many people put 'milk' for #1 -- ? How many people put 'steel' for #1 -- ? How many people put 'milk' for #2 -- ? And how many people put 'steel' for #2 -- ? (Etc.)

*This* would be socially useful information that could be the whole basis for a socialist political economy.

So, by extension, if someone was particularly interested in 'Event Y', they might undertake efforts to convince others to *donate* their ranking slots to them, forgoing 'milk' and 'steel' (for example) for positions #1 and/or #2. Formally these others would put 'Person Z for Event Y' for positions 1 and/or 2, etc., for as many days / iterations as they might want to donate. This, in effect, would be a populist-political-type campaign, of whatever magnitude, for the sake of a person's own particularly favored consumption preferences, given an unavoidably limited supply of it, whatever it may be.



https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, since you're in *partial* agreement, I'll just reiterate that that proves 'direct distribution' (from the manufacturer to the consumer) is logistically possible, meaning that capitalist exchange values are no longer logistically required for a realistic post-capitalist political economy.

If you *agree* then your politics would be for *nationalization* at least, as recently spelled-out at another thread:


Is Bolshevik Communism really Marxist

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=180496



wat0n wrote:
Certainly, you can have a badly functioning centrally planned economy like the communist bloc had back in the Cold War. But wouldn't we prefer to have a more efficient economy?



You'd first have to specify some *qualitative* variable, or index -- 'efficiency' is more about *quantitative* measures, but it doesn't speak to the society's overall 'ethos', or 'goals'.

Nationalization would quantitatively / logistically be more *efficient*, but it wouldn't speak to what the economy would be *for*, primarily. The USSR was mostly focused on industrialization / production goods -- and catching up to the West, almost *obsessively*, unfortunately, and consumers felt underserved.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, not a libertarian, because I have no (class) interest in seeing the continuation of the capitalist / market system. I guess I *do* share some common ground with the libertarian position on wanting to let the markets fail entirely, if that's what they're prone to do. My politics would call for the *workers* to then run social production without the capitalist market 'software' (economy) functioning anymore.

You'll have to denote what 'countercyclical policy' is, but I suspect that current government underwriting of corporate bad debt is the current *implementation* of 'countercyclical policy'.

Here's a refresher from that previous Wikipedia entry:



wat0n wrote:
You may want to read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procyclic ... _variables



Oh, you mean *Keynesianism*. So how's that Keynesian / supply-side stuff working out -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, my understanding of it is that it's a *Stalinism*-type thing -- or a *workers state* thing, as a socialist transition to overthrow the bourgeoisie, on the road to communism.

Take a look back at this prior segment:

In this scenario, without the need for *retail*-type parceling-up of wholesale inventories, what you're describing is basically *word-of-mouth*, or blogging and YouTube-type *opinionating* about the market, because in the end the consumer would just order what they want, perhaps with a preference for a manufacturer within their own *continent*.

And how would those manufacturers build their factories in the first place, and hire labor, and pay for operational expenses -- ? That's where nationalization and Marx's 'central banking' come into play, since a global centralized allocation of productive *priorities*, without the market mechanism, would be what we're talking about at this point.



wat0n wrote:
I don't think it's quite the same as word of mouth, honestly. Word of mouth will serve as a complement to advertising, but a retailer does a lot more than just that. For starters, you can actually buy the product at hand from the retailer.



Well do elaborate on the material-logistical functions of retailing, then -- you've got 'geography' / localization so far, but that's about it from what I can see. I don't think that localization alone justifies the immense markups, since that's where the money is, in retail.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well how is the oppressed working class supposed to get out of being subordinated by the world's *ruling* class? It's the *ruling* class that owns everything, like factories, in particular.



wat0n wrote:
Incrementalism is a thing, you know.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Would you tell Julian Assange to 'incrementally' get out of prison?

Why should *anyone* tolerate an extended, delayed 'incrementalism', instead of justice itself -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Because revolution need not be just, actually.



ckaihatsu wrote:
What kind of a revolution are *you* indicating here -- ?



wat0n wrote:
The kind where the Terror leads to mass killings.



Oh, you have concerns about "violence". Here's a chart for that:


Means and Ends CHART

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You said the subprime mortgage crisis was due to 'incompetence', which implies *personnel*, and not the system itself. Yet capitalism has these crises *regularly* -- it just had one in 2020, which required government bailouts, this time due to the unforeseen coronavirus pandemic.

My point stands that because you'd rather blame *people* / human judgment, and not the capitalist system itself (market dynamics), that makes you a *market dogmatist*. You're *covering* for the inadequate functioning of the markets, as in the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis, by blaming *people*.



wat0n wrote:
Why didn't other countries have similar problems? I'm thinking about, for instance, Canada.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Please let us know when you find out.



wat0n wrote:
I'm curious to learn about your explanation. Canada for instance had and still has a different banking regulatory framework from that the US had by 2008.



ckaihatsu wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rec ... cas#Canada


You're welcome. Now you're down to *two* wishes. (grin)



wat0n wrote:
What's your point here? Yes, Canada had a recession but due to the drop in the global economic activity. It didn't face a banking crisis like the US and some European countries did.



Oh, now you're thinking it's about the particular *governance* / frameworks for this banking industry, versus that. You're continuing to show yourself to be a market dogmatist by willfully ignoring the *economic* / market dynamics, which are summed up as supply-and-demand -- a tidal wave of unutilized capital in search of markets, increasingly desperate and more willing to gamble big on risky overhyped subprime mortgages.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Uh-oh. (grin).



wat0n wrote:
It means you can get caught with your pants down when Marxism turns to be wrong.



I was actually just looking around for a public notary, to get my Marxism *notarized*, and made all *official* and stuff....


x D


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The mass media is a form of *power*, you know:


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



wat0n wrote:
So?



So that answers your question:


wat0n wrote:
See nationalism motivating working classes to serve their national armies in WWI for an example, as above.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I'd call that 'mass media'. (Ever see 'All Quiet on the Western Front'?)



Here:



Paul recalls his schoolmaster, Kantorek, a fiercely patriotic man who persuaded many of Paul’s friends to enlist as volunteers to prove their patriotism. Joseph Behm, one such young man, was hesitant but eventually gave in to Kantorek’s unrelenting pressure. He was one of the first to die, and his death was particularly horrible. With Behm’s death, Paul and his classmates lost their innocent trust in authority figures such as Kantorek. Kantorek writes a letter to them filled with the empty phrases of patriotic fervor, calling them “Iron Youth” and glorifying their heroism. The men reflect that they once idolized Kantorek but now despise him; they blame him for pushing them into the army and exposing them to the horror of war.



https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/allquiet/section1/




---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I maintain that it had a lasting deleterious effect on the economy that enabled Stalin to rise to power, and to consolidate.



wat0n wrote:
My understanding is that the Allies simply gave up and decided to contain.



Basically, but here's what happened economically, as a result:



War communism or military communism (Russian: Военный коммунизм, Voyennyy kommunizm) was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921.

According to Soviet historiography, the ruling Bolshevik administration adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the proletarian power-base) and the Red Army stocked with food and weapons since circumstances dictated new economic measures as the ongoing civil war exposed old capitalist market-based system as unable to produce food and expand the industrial base. War communism has often been described as simple authoritarian control by the ruling and military class to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather then any coherent political ideology.[1]



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



---


wat0n wrote:
Could it be that the Orthodox Church was a referent for many Russians and thus coopting was actually valuable for the Soviets?



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, I wouldn't agree -- they were political *rivals*.



wat0n wrote:
Then why did the Soviets allow it to operate again?



Please keep in mind that the 'Soviets' were *Stalinists* -- there was a *paradigm shift* going from Lenin, to Stalin. By the time Stalin took over there wasn't much left of the initial Bolshevik Revolution, regarding *content*. The country basically became *nationalist* under Stalin.
#15177076
ckaihatsu wrote:Here -- I found this....


This doesn't really negate what I mentioned above, in the long run stock returns don't decrease indefinitely but level off at a given level.

ckaihatsu wrote:So this is really more of a *wealth distribution* issue, then -- yeah, I realized some time ago that I hadn't even heard of a good *revolutionary* approach to the question, so I developed one. (The sample scenario is 'Who gets to attend an outdoor concert'.)


Right, but it illustrates the problem either way. In the end someone will have to give in and be housed in a place he might prefer not to be.

ckaihatsu wrote:You'd first have to specify some *qualitative* variable, or index -- 'efficiency' is more about *quantitative* measures, but it doesn't speak to the society's overall 'ethos', or 'goals'.

Nationalization would quantitatively / logistically be more *efficient*, but it wouldn't speak to what the economy would be *for*, primarily. The USSR was mostly focused on industrialization / production goods -- and catching up to the West, almost *obsessively*, unfortunately, and consumers felt underserved.


No, nationalization would not necessarily be more efficient.

ckaihatsu wrote:Oh, you mean *Keynesianism*. So how's that Keynesian / supply-side stuff working out -- ?


Not too badly, actually.

ckaihatsu wrote:Well do elaborate on the material-logistical functions of retailing, then -- you've got 'geography' / localization so far, but that's about it from what I can see. I don't think that localization alone justifies the immense markups, since that's where the money is, in retail.


How large are the markups?

ckaihatsu wrote:Oh, you have concerns about "violence". Here's a chart for that:


Means and Ends CHART

Spoiler: show
Image


Yes, the end justifies the means and all that. But it's not a concern about violence simply for its own sake, terror often leads to a harsher Thermidorian reaction sooner or later too, and then dictatorship.

ckaihatsu wrote:Oh, now you're thinking it's about the particular *governance* / frameworks for this banking industry, versus that. You're continuing to show yourself to be a market dogmatist by willfully ignoring the *economic* / market dynamics, which are summed up as supply-and-demand -- a tidal wave of unutilized capital in search of markets, increasingly desperate and more willing to gamble big on risky overhyped subprime mortgages.


...All because of the existence of an implicit guarantee that governments would intervene if the risks were systemic, which creates an evident moral hazard. The existence of such moral hazard is precisely what justifies having banking regulations.

ckaihatsu wrote:I was actually just looking around for a public notary, to get my Marxism *notarized*, and made all *official* and stuff....


x D


Odd, I often see Marxists waving their credentials whenever they can :)

ckaihatsu wrote:So that answers your question:

Here:


So basically that works with very young people, right? But why was public opinion across all countries generally OK with the war at the beginning?

ckaihatsu wrote:Basically, but here's what happened economically, as a result:


Right, and it ended in 1921. Also, many of those provisions would be maintained by Stalin anyway.

ckaihatsu wrote:Please keep in mind that the 'Soviets' were *Stalinists* -- there was a *paradigm shift* going from Lenin, to Stalin. By the time Stalin took over there wasn't much left of the initial Bolshevik Revolution, regarding *content*. The country basically became *nationalist* under Stalin.


Indeed, and that did not happen for no reason.
#15177117
ckaihatsu wrote:
Here -- I found this....


The McKinsey Global Institute claimed in 2016 that the three decades from 1985 to 2014 were the golden years for profits from stocks and bonds, but forecasts that average profitability will be lower in the future.[93]

In May 2018, a Wall Street Journal analyst concluded that if taxcut effects are removed from the figures, real US corporate profits were not growing anymore, notwithstanding a surge in profits on S&P listed shares. Another analyst commented that "With the profits data, it could take several quarters for clear trends to emerge from the tax-associated noise."[94] From September 2018 onward, as the economic and political news worsened, the bloated US stockmarkets began to deflate, while the VIX index trebled.[95] In November 2018, Michael Wursthorn reported that "The postcrisis boom in U.S. corporate profits may be near its peak."[96] CNBC reported a similar story.[97] At the end of 2018, the record gains for the year by the 500 richest people listed on the daily Bloomberg Billionaires Index had been wiped out – together, they had lost more than half a trillion dollars of net wealth.[98]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_ ... it_to_fall



wat0n wrote:
This doesn't really negate what I mentioned above, in the long run stock returns don't decrease indefinitely but level off at a given level.



Hmmm, that empirical data certainly doesn't *support* your 'leveling-off' contention.

Also, what about *this*:



The 2020 stock market crash was a major and sudden global stock market crash that began on 20 February 2020 and ended on 7 April.

Beginning on 13 May 2019, the yield curve on U.S. Treasury securities inverted,[1] and remained so until 11 October 2019, when it reverted to normal.[2] Through 2019, while some economists (including Campbell Harvey and former New York Federal Reserve economist Arturo Estrella) argued that a recession in the following year was likely,[3][4] other economists (including the managing director of Wells Fargo Securities Michael Schumacher and San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary C. Daly) argued that inverted yield curves may no longer be a reliable recession predictor.[5][2] The yield curve on U.S. Treasuries would not invert again until 30 January 2020 when the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern,[6][7] four weeks after local health commission officials in Wuhan, China announced the first 27 COVID-19 cases as a viral pneumonia strain outbreak on 1 January.[8]



Image



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_stock_market_crash



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So this is really more of a *wealth distribution* issue, then -- yeah, I realized some time ago that I hadn't even heard of a good *revolutionary* approach to the question, so I developed one. (The sample scenario is 'Who gets to attend an outdoor concert'.)



wat0n wrote:
Right, but it illustrates the problem either way. In the end someone will have to give in and be housed in a place he might prefer not to be.



Okay, you seem to be agreeing that homelessness is fundamentally a wealth-distribution issue. How do you propose to address festering income inequality and wealth inequality, including homelessness?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You'd first have to specify some *qualitative* variable, or index -- 'efficiency' is more about *quantitative* measures, but it doesn't speak to the society's overall 'ethos', or 'goals'.

Nationalization would quantitatively / logistically be more *efficient*, but it wouldn't speak to what the economy would be *for*, primarily. The USSR was mostly focused on industrialization / production goods -- and catching up to the West, almost *obsessively*, unfortunately, and consumers felt underserved.



wat0n wrote:
No, nationalization would not necessarily be more efficient.



Yes, nationalization would be more logistically efficient because it would replace market competition with a 'single-payer' / government model. (Think Medicare-For-All.) With *one* set of administration, instead of *several* in the private sector competing and overlapping, costs could be readily contained, as with pharmaceuticals in Canada, for example.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, you mean *Keynesianism*. So how's that Keynesian / supply-side stuff working out -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Not too badly, actually.



You're *incorrect*:



The U.S. has the highest level of income inequality among its (post-)industrialized peers.[1] When measured for all households, U.S. income inequality is comparable to other developed countries before taxes and transfers, but is among the highest after taxes and transfers, meaning the U.S. shifts relatively less income from higher income households to lower income households. In 2016, average market income was $15,600 for the lowest quintile and $280,300 for the highest quintile. The degree of inequality accelerated within the top quintile, with the top 1% at $1.8 million, approximately 30 times the $59,300 income of the middle quintile.[2]

The economic and political impacts of inequality may include slower GDP growth, reduced income mobility, higher poverty rates, greater usage of household debt leading to increased risk of financial crises, and political polarization.[3] Causes of inequality may include executive compensation increasing relative to the average worker, financialization, greater industry concentration, lower unionization rates, lower effective tax rates on higher incomes, and technology changes that reward higher educational attainment.[4]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in ... ted_States



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well do elaborate on the material-logistical functions of retailing, then -- you've got 'geography' / localization so far, but that's about it from what I can see. I don't think that localization alone justifies the immense markups, since that's where the money is, in retail.



wat0n wrote:
How large are the markups?



Please report back here whatever you happen to find.

My point stands that retail sales were *never* logistically necessary, and even less-so today, with online shopping and direct-to-consumer shipping (obviating the retail level logistically).


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, you have concerns about "violence". Here's a chart for that:


Means and Ends CHART

Spoiler: show
Image



wat0n wrote:
Yes, the end justifies the means and all that. But it's not a concern about violence simply for its own sake, terror often leads to a harsher Thermidorian reaction sooner or later too, and then dictatorship.



Do you have a crystal ball? Are you purporting to tell everyone what the future will be, automatically?

By using the term 'violence simply for its own sake' you're effectively *contradicting* your previous statement that 'Yes, the end justifies the means and all that.'

So *which* is it -- do people typically do 'violence simply for its own sake', or is violence moreso a *means* to an *end*, as with revolutionary terror in history, and a Thermidorian-type reaction?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, now you're thinking it's about the particular *governance* / frameworks for this banking industry, versus that. You're continuing to show yourself to be a market dogmatist by willfully ignoring the *economic* / market dynamics, which are summed up as supply-and-demand -- a tidal wave of unutilized capital in search of markets, increasingly desperate and more willing to gamble big on risky overhyped subprime mortgages.



wat0n wrote:
...All because of the existence of an implicit guarantee that governments would intervene if the risks were systemic, which creates an evident moral hazard. The existence of such moral hazard is precisely what justifies having banking regulations.



What would those 'anti-moral-hazard', cautionary banking regulations *be*, exactly -- ?

You're sounding very *disingenuous* because I don't think that the banking industry would be stirring in the least over government subsidies to zombie companies.

Here's that info again:



On 12 May [2020], the Fed began buying corporate bond ETFs for the first time in its history. It stated its intention to buy bonds directly "in the near future". As companies must prove that they can not otherwise access normal credit to be eligible for the primary market facility, analysts opined that it may create a stigma for companies and be little used. However, the guarantee of a Fed backstop appears to have ensured market liquidity.[103]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate ... s_in_April



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I was actually just looking around for a public notary, to get my Marxism *notarized*, and made all *official* and stuff....


x D



wat0n wrote:
Odd, I often see Marxists waving their credentials whenever they can :)



Yeah, it's usually a big red flag but I've been indulging in some *personal* purchases lately.... (grin)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So that answers your question:

Here:



wat0n wrote:
So basically that works with very young people, right? But why was public opinion across all countries generally OK with the war at the beginning?



According to this source you're *exaggerating* the popular support that existed for starting World War I:



The popularity of the war was not necessarily as deeply engrained among the mass of people as the enthusiastic demonstrations and singing of patriotic songs suggested. Historian David Blackbourn writes of Germany, ‘The patriotic demonstrations of late July involved relatively small groups, with students and young salesmen prominent. Working class areas like the Ruhr were quiet… Older observers noted a contrast with the enthusiasm of 1870’.41 Shlyapnikov, a revolutionary worker in St Petersburg, contrasted the enthusiasm for the war among the middle and upper classes with the more subdued mood in the factories:

The St Petersburg press did much to kindle popular chauvinism. They skilfully blew up ‘German’ atrocities against Russian women and old men remaining in Germany. But even this hostile atmosphere did not drive workers to an excess of nationalism.42

Ralph Fox told how, as a young worker in London, it was possible to organise weekly anti-war meetings in Finsbury Park.43

Trotsky explained the mood more as a reaction to people’s normal humdrum lives than any deep-seated nationalism:

The people whose lives, day in day out, pass in the monotony of hopelessness are many; they are the mainstay of modern society. The alarm of mobilisation breaks into their lives like a promise; the familiar and long-hated is overthrown, and the new and unusual reigns in its place.

Changes still more incredible are in store for them in the future. For better or worse? For better, of course—what can seem worse than ‘normal’ conditions?… War affects everybody, and those who are oppressed and deceived by life consequently feel that they are on an equal footing with the rich and powerful.44

Different social classes are never fully segregated from one another. The mood of those at the top influences those just below them, and the mood of those in the middle influences those at the bottom.

The determination of Europe’s ruling classes to go to war with one another was transmitted in a thousand ways to the middle classes and sections of the working class—through patriotic speeches and newspaper stories about ‘enemy atrocities’, through marching bands and popular songs, and through declarations by novelists, poets and philosophers. The German historian Meinecke described the outbreak of the war as filling him with ‘the profoundest joy’. The radical French novelist Anatole France recalled (with a sense of shame) making ‘little speeches to the soldiers’. The philosopher Bergson described the war as one of ‘civilisation against barbarism’. The English poet Rupert Brooke wrote that ‘nobleness walks in our ways again’,45 and the novelist H G Wells enthused about a ‘war to end war’. Schoolteachers repeated such statements to adolescent boys, urging them to go off and fight. Anyone who dissented was guilty of ‘stabbing our boys in the back’.

There were still wide groups of workers who could be expected to resist such pressures. Socialist movements and groups of trade union militants were accustomed to lies in the press and attacks on their principles. Many had flocked to rallies of thousands in London, Paris and Berlin on the eve of the war to hear their leaders call for peace. But once war broke out, those same leaders rushed to support it. The German and Austrian Social Democrats, the British Labour Party and TUC, the French Socialist Guesde and the syndicalist Jouhaux, the veteran Russian Marxist Plekhanov and the veteran Russian anarchist Kropotkin—all were united in their willingness to back their rulers against others. Those who had doubts—for instance, Kautsky and Haase in Germany, and Keir Hardie in Britain—kept quiet in order to preserve ‘party unity’ and to avoid being accused of betraying ‘the nation’. ‘A nation at war must be united,’ wrote Hardie. ‘The boys who have gone forth to fight their country’s battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home’.46



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 405-407



---


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



wat0n wrote:
That had already been over several years prior to Stalin's rise to power.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I maintain that it had a lasting deleterious effect on the economy that enabled Stalin to rise to power, and to consolidate.



wat0n wrote:
My understanding is that the Allies simply gave up and decided to contain.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Basically, but here's what happened economically, as a result:


War communism or military communism (Russian: Военный коммунизм, Voyennyy kommunizm) was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921.

According to Soviet historiography, the ruling Bolshevik administration adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the proletarian power-base) and the Red Army stocked with food and weapons since circumstances dictated new economic measures as the ongoing civil war exposed old capitalist market-based system as unable to produce food and expand the industrial base. War communism has often been described as simple authoritarian control by the ruling and military class to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather then any coherent political ideology.[1]

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



wat0n wrote:
Right, and it ended in 1921. Also, many of those provisions would be maintained by Stalin anyway.



My point stands that the Western Allies imperialist militarist invasion (along with the domestic counterrevolution) threw off the country's economy and enabled Stalin's own consolidation of power and nationalism after Lenin's death.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Please keep in mind that the 'Soviets' were *Stalinists* -- there was a *paradigm shift* going from Lenin, to Stalin. By the time Stalin took over there wasn't much left of the initial Bolshevik Revolution, regarding *content*. The country basically became *nationalist* under Stalin.



wat0n wrote:
Indeed, and that did not happen for no reason.



Okay, what reason are you implying here?
#15177119
ckaihatsu wrote:Hmmm, that empirical data certainly doesn't *support* your 'leveling-off' contention.


Really? That's exactly what one of the papers I cited in the other thread showed.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/worki ... w24112.pdf

ckaihatsu wrote:Also, what about *this*:


Do you see a downward trend there?

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, you seem to be agreeing that homelessness is fundamentally a wealth-distribution issue. How do you propose to address festering income inequality and wealth inequality, including homelessness?


Some redistribution of income is necessary (wealth will follow in the long term). But for housing, even that won't help if the issue is one of location.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yes, nationalization would be more logistically efficient because it would replace market competition with a 'single-payer' / government model. (Think Medicare-For-All.) With *one* set of administration, instead of *several* in the private sector competing and overlapping, costs could be readily contained, as with pharmaceuticals in Canada, for example.


Or costs could shoot up due to the fact that, for example, governments may just name managers following political instead of technical criteria. This also does not solve the issue of customization of services, which is one reason why single payer health insurance isn't really comparable to retail.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're *incorrect*:


No, I'm not incorrect. It's telling you choose to limit the analysis to industrialized countries only, all of which broadly follow similar capitalist policies.

ckaihatsu wrote:Please report back here whatever you happen to find.

My point stands that retail sales were *never* logistically necessary, and even less-so today, with online shopping and direct-to-consumer shipping (obviating the retail level logistically).


You claimed markups are immense. So how large are they?

ckaihatsu wrote:Do you have a crystal ball? Are you purporting to tell everyone what the future will be, automatically?


I know enough history to understand how that ends.

ckaihatsu wrote:By using the term 'violence simply for its own sake' you're effectively *contradicting* your previous statement that 'Yes, the end justifies the means and all that.'

So *which* is it -- do people typically do 'violence simply for its own sake', or is violence moreso a *means* to an *end*, as with revolutionary terror in history, and a Thermidorian-type reaction?


Certainly that violence starts as means to an end, indeed, the revolutionary Terror has an end, even if the ones exercising it may take a liking to use it for its own sake eventually.

ckaihatsu wrote:What would those 'anti-moral-hazard', cautionary banking regulations *be*, exactly -- ?


Capital requirements are an example of those regulations.

ckaihatsu wrote:You're sounding very *disingenuous* because I don't think that the banking industry would be stirring in the least over government subsidies to zombie companies.

Here's that info again:


Given the banks weren't zombified after 2009, I don't see what your point is.

ckaihatsu wrote:According to this source you're *exaggerating* the popular support that existed for starting World War I:


Maybe, although it's rather vague. It is interesting to see even leftists eventually jumped in once the war began. This doesn't explain how were states able to recruit en masse, though.

ckaihatsu wrote:My point stands that the Western Allies imperialist militarist invasion (along with the domestic counterrevolution) threw off the country's economy and enabled Stalin's own consolidation of power and nationalism after Lenin's death.


What makes you believe it was due to the Allies and not simply due to internal resistance?

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, what reason are you implying here?


Soviet identity was not based just on class.
#15177214
ckaihatsu wrote:
Hmmm, that empirical data certainly doesn't *support* your 'leveling-off' contention.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Really? That's exactly what one of the papers I cited in the other thread showed.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/worki ... w24112.pdf



Well, it doesn't. This other paper you just introduced isn't the data that I was referring to, so it's apples-and-oranges.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Also, what about *this*:


The 2020 stock market crash was a major and sudden global stock market crash that began on 20 February 2020 and ended on 7 April.

Beginning on 13 May 2019, the yield curve on U.S. Treasury securities inverted,[1] and remained so until 11 October 2019, when it reverted to normal.[2] Through 2019, while some economists (including Campbell Harvey and former New York Federal Reserve economist Arturo Estrella) argued that a recession in the following year was likely,[3][4] other economists (including the managing director of Wells Fargo Securities Michael Schumacher and San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary C. Daly) argued that inverted yield curves may no longer be a reliable recession predictor.[5][2] The yield curve on U.S. Treasuries would not invert again until 30 January 2020 when the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern,[6][7] four weeks after local health commission officials in Wuhan, China announced the first 27 COVID-19 cases as a viral pneumonia strain outbreak on 1 January.[8]

Image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_stock_market_crash



wat0n wrote:
Do you see a downward trend there?



I have to backtrack, since the stock market isn't *profits*, exactly -- here's research done on the *rate of profit* itself:



The US rate of profit 1948-2015

The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has just updated its estimates of net fixed capital stock in the US economy. This gives us the opportunity to measure the US rate of profit a la Marx up to 2015.

I made such measurements up to 2014 in a previous post about a year ago. Last December, I summed up the conclusions from the data. “First, the secular decline in the US rate of profit since 1945 is confirmed and indeed, on most measures, profitability is close to post-war lows. Second, the main cause of the secular fall is clearly a rise in the organic composition of capital, so Marx’s explanation of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is also confirmed. Third, profitability on most measures peaked in the late 1990s after the ‘neoliberal’ recovery. Since then, the US rate of profit has been static or falling. And fourth, since about 2010-12, profitability has started to fall again. Finally, the fall in the rate of profit in the US has now given way to a fall in the mass of profits.”

Now that we have all the 2015 data, I have revised the results with the help of Anders Axelsson from Sweden who has produced a very handy manual for anybody to use to work out and replicate the results. Anders has also checked the 2015 data as well. short-manual-for-downloading-rop-data-from-bureau-of-economic-analysis-1

The conclusions reached last year are pretty much unchanged. In last year’s post, I updated the rate of profit as measured using the assumptions and methods of Andrew Kliman in his book, The failure of capitalist production. AK measures the rate of profit for the corporate sector only and uses the historic cost of net fixed assets as the denominator. I also used a slightly different variation of AK’s approach in depreciating profits by current costs, while maintaining a historic cost measure of fixed assets. If all this sounds technical, it is and I refer you to the already cited papers and posts for an explanation. See Anders’ manual too. And there is special appendix in my new book, The Long Depression, on measuring the rate of profit.

Anyway, the results for the US corporate rate of profit look like this.

Image



https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/ ... 1948-2015/



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, you seem to be agreeing that homelessness is fundamentally a wealth-distribution issue. How do you propose to address festering income inequality and wealth inequality, including homelessness?



wat0n wrote:
Some redistribution of income is necessary (wealth will follow in the long term). But for housing, even that won't help if the issue is one of location.



Revolutionaries like myself point out that the entire capitalist *system* creates inequality, so there's no hope of "gradually" doing a redistribution under capitalism itself. Ditto for the ongoing *income inequality* -- the entire system needs to be overthrown so that the working class can best-determine how to produce for all of society.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, nationalization would be more logistically efficient because it would replace market competition with a 'single-payer' / government model. (Think Medicare-For-All.) With *one* set of administration, instead of *several* in the private sector competing and overlapping, costs could be readily contained, as with pharmaceuticals in Canada, for example.



wat0n wrote:
Or costs could shoot up due to the fact that, for example, governments may just name managers following political instead of technical criteria. This also does not solve the issue of customization of services, which is one reason why single payer health insurance isn't really comparable to retail.



No, you're forgetting that there can be a *democratic* process underneath, so that managers are directly accountable to the electorate, and can be instantly recallable at any moment.

Customization doesn't require the private sector -- case management can be done by a Universal Basic Services approach.

I'll remind that profits is a *cost* to funding, so it's more cost-effective for public funding to *not* have to pay the tacked-on cost of profits to private concerns -- such are often considered a 'bribe' of sorts, since the means of production happen to currently be under such private control.



Price controls are restrictions set in place and enforced by governments, on the prices that can be charged for goods and services in a market. The intent behind implementing such controls can stem from the desire to maintain affordability of goods even during shortages, and to slow inflation, or, alternatively, to ensure a minimum income for providers of certain goods or to try to achieve a living wage. There are two primary forms of price control: a price ceiling, the maximum price that can be charged; and a price floor, the minimum price that can be charged. A well-known example of a price ceiling is rent control, which limits the increases in rent. A widely used price floor is minimum wage (wages are the price of labor). Historically, price controls have often been imposed as part of a larger incomes policy package also employing wage controls and other regulatory elements.



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, you mean *Keynesianism*. So how's that Keynesian / supply-side stuff working out -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Not too badly, actually.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're *incorrect*:


The U.S. has the highest level of income inequality among its (post-)industrialized peers.[1] When measured for all households, U.S. income inequality is comparable to other developed countries before taxes and transfers, but is among the highest after taxes and transfers, meaning the U.S. shifts relatively less income from higher income households to lower income households. In 2016, average market income was $15,600 for the lowest quintile and $280,300 for the highest quintile. The degree of inequality accelerated within the top quintile, with the top 1% at $1.8 million, approximately 30 times the $59,300 income of the middle quintile.[2]

The economic and political impacts of inequality may include slower GDP growth, reduced income mobility, higher poverty rates, greater usage of household debt leading to increased risk of financial crises, and political polarization.[3] Causes of inequality may include executive compensation increasing relative to the average worker, financialization, greater industry concentration, lower unionization rates, lower effective tax rates on higher incomes, and technology changes that reward higher educational attainment.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in ... ted_States



wat0n wrote:
No, I'm not incorrect. It's telling you choose to limit the analysis to industrialized countries only, all of which broadly follow similar capitalist policies.



Yes, you're incorrect, because government deficit spending (Keynesianism), for *supply-side* causes, is *unjustifiable* since such 'trickle-down' economic theory has long since been disproven as effective:



Trickle-down economics, also known as trickle-down theory or the horse and sparrow theory, is the economic proposition that taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society should be reduced as a means to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term. In recent history, the term has been used by critics of supply-side economic policies, such as "Reaganomics". Whereas general supply-side theory favors lowering taxes overall, trickle-down theory more specifically advocates for a lower tax burden on the upper end of the economic spectrum.[1][2] Empirical evidence shows that the proposition has never managed to achieve all of its stated goals as described by the Reagan administration.[3][4][5][6]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Please report back here whatever you happen to find.

My point stands that retail sales were *never* logistically necessary, and even less-so today, with online shopping and direct-to-consumer shipping (obviating the retail level logistically).



wat0n wrote:
You claimed markups are immense. So how large are they?



They *vary*, and can be quite considerable depending on how little is paid to the actual *producers* of the commodity being sold -- the more *labor exploitation*, the larger the retail markup. Apple comes to mind, in particular.


---


wat0n wrote:
Yes, the end justifies the means and all that. But it's not a concern about violence simply for its own sake, terror often leads to a harsher Thermidorian reaction sooner or later too, and then dictatorship.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you have a crystal ball? Are you purporting to tell everyone what the future will be, automatically?



wat0n wrote:
I know enough history to understand how that ends.



This is being *presumptuous* and fatalistic -- many claimed that *slavery* would never end, and yet the norm is now the use of industrialized mechanization, over treating *people* as private property.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
By using the term 'violence simply for its own sake' you're effectively *contradicting* your previous statement that 'Yes, the end justifies the means and all that.'

So *which* is it -- do people typically do 'violence simply for its own sake', or is violence moreso a *means* to an *end*, as with revolutionary terror in history, and a Thermidorian-type reaction?



wat0n wrote:
Certainly that violence starts as means to an end, indeed, the revolutionary Terror has an end, even if the ones exercising it may take a liking to use it for its own sake eventually.




The 200 year litany of complaints about the executions of aristocrats and royalists must be put in perspective. Executions had been a continual occurrence under the old regime. Poor people could be hanged for stealing a piece of cloth. As Mark Twain once put it, ‘There were two reigns of terror: one lasted several months, the other 1,000 years.’



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 294



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, now you're thinking it's about the particular *governance* / frameworks for this banking industry, versus that. You're continuing to show yourself to be a market dogmatist by willfully ignoring the *economic* / market dynamics, which are summed up as supply-and-demand -- a tidal wave of unutilized capital in search of markets, increasingly desperate and more willing to gamble big on risky overhyped subprime mortgages.



wat0n wrote:
...All because of the existence of an implicit guarantee that governments would intervene if the risks were systemic, which creates an evident moral hazard. The existence of such moral hazard is precisely what justifies having banking regulations.



ckaihatsu wrote:
What would those 'anti-moral-hazard', cautionary banking regulations *be*, exactly -- ?



wat0n wrote:
Capital requirements are an example of those regulations.



This is apples-and-oranges -- what's at-stake here are the prevailing of high-risk, junk-bond-type financial vehicles, and the ongoing government funding of zombie companies, while what you're talking about is fractional reserve lending for banks which is a different thing altogether.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're sounding very *disingenuous* because I don't think that the banking industry would be stirring in the least over government subsidies to zombie companies.

Here's that info again:


On 12 May [2020], the Fed began buying corporate bond ETFs for the first time in its history. It stated its intention to buy bonds directly "in the near future". As companies must prove that they can not otherwise access normal credit to be eligible for the primary market facility, analysts opined that it may create a stigma for companies and be little used. However, the guarantee of a Fed backstop appears to have ensured market liquidity.[103]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate ... s_in_April



wat0n wrote:
Given the banks weren't zombified after 2009, I don't see what your point is.



My point is that public funding is *still* being used, at the rate of $120 billion a month, simply to keep insolvent companies afloat. This is pure *ideology*, and your blaming of *people* for the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage meltdown means that you're *covering* for market dynamics, and all of capitalism, making you a *market dogmatist*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
According to this source you're *exaggerating* the popular support that existed for starting World War I:



wat0n wrote:
Maybe, although it's rather vague. It is interesting to see even leftists eventually jumped in once the war began. This doesn't explain how were states able to recruit en masse, though.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
My point stands that the Western Allies imperialist militarist invasion (along with the domestic counterrevolution) threw off the country's economy and enabled Stalin's own consolidation of power and nationalism after Lenin's death.



wat0n wrote:
What makes you believe it was due to the Allies and not simply due to internal resistance?



The Allied imperialist militarist invasion was *considerable*:



Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

Part of the Russian Civil War
Date 1918–1925
Location
Former Russian Empire
Result Allied withdrawal
Defeat and collapse of the Russian White Movement

Belligerents
Allied Powers:
White Movement
Czechoslovakia[a]
United Kingdom[b]
Canada[c]
Australia[d]
India
South Africa[1]
United States[e]
France[f]
Japan
Greece
Estonia
Serbia
Italy

Bolsheviks:
Russian SFSR
Far Eastern Republic
Latvian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
Commune of Estonia

Commanders and leaders
Alexander Kolchak
Mikhail Diterikhs
Grigory Semyonov
Nikolai Yudenich
Evgeny Miller
Anton Denikin
Pyotr Wrangel
Radola Gajda
Stanislav Čeček
Sergei Wojciechowski
Jan Syrový
Kikuzo Otani
Yui Mitsue
William S. Graves
George E. Stewart
Robert L. Eichelberger
Edmund Ironside
Frederick Poole
Lionel Dunsterville
William Thomson
Wilfrid Malleson
Walter Cowan
Henri Bertholot
Philippe d'Anselme
Konstantinos Nider
Ernest Broșteanu
Vladimir Lenin
Leon Trotsky
Jukums Vācietis
Sergey Kamenev
Pavel Dybenko
Nikolai Krylenko
Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Frunze
Vasily Blyukher
Alexander Samoylo
Joseph Stalin
Kliment Voroshilov
Fedor Raskolnikov
Dmitry Zhloba
Semyon Budyonny
Hayk Bzhishkyan
Mikhail Muravyov
Dmitry Nadyozhny
Dmitri Parsky
Alexander Krasnoshchyokov

Strength
50,000-70,000 troops
15,600 troops
30,000 troops[2]
11,000 troops
11,300 troops
70,000 troops
59,150 troops[3][4][5][6]
4,700+ troops
2,500 troops
2,000 troops
150 troops

Unknown

Casualties and losses
Czechoslovakia: 4,112 killed[7]
United Kingdom:
938+ killed[8][9][10][11]
United States: 424 killed[12]
Greece:[13]
179 killed
173 missing
46 dead from wounds or non-combat related causes
657 wounded



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Please keep in mind that the 'Soviets' were *Stalinists* -- there was a *paradigm shift* going from Lenin, to Stalin. By the time Stalin took over there wasn't much left of the initial Bolshevik Revolution, regarding *content*. The country basically became *nationalist* under Stalin.



wat0n wrote:
Indeed, and that did not happen for no reason.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, what reason are you implying here?



wat0n wrote:
Soviet identity was not based just on class.



The degeneration of soviet democracy, into Stalinist nationalist consolidation, wasn't about (cultural) *identity* -- it was about whether the Western capitalist class, or an internal royalist one, or an internal strongman one, or a worldwide *workers* revolution, would prevail.


---


And, relatedly, from before:


ckaihatsu wrote:
Marxists look at the question *historically*, in terms of *when* the (initial) development of nation-states conferred a step-up in social organization, as over warring duchies in Europe, for example. This socio-political development was still *class-based*, though, so the toilers had to remain toiling, nonetheless.



wat0n wrote:
Yes, Marxists hace their own particular view of history. But it would seem it fails to account for several relevant real world events and trends.




It was Karl Marx who provided an insight into this general pattern. He pointed out that human beings have only been able to survive on this planet through cooperative effort to make a livelihood, and that every new way of making such a livelihood has necessitated changes in their wider relationships with each other. Changes in what he called ‘the forces of production’ are associated with changes in ‘the relations of production’, and these eventually transform the wider relationships in society as a whole.

Such changes do not, however, occur in a mechanical way. At each point human beings make choices whether to proceed along one path or another, and fight out these choices in great social conflicts. Beyond a certain point in history, how people make their choices is connected to their class position. The slave is likely to make a different choice to the slave-owner, the feudal artisan to the feudal lord. The great struggles over the future of humanity have involved an element of class struggle. The sequence of these great struggles provides the skeleton round which the rest of history grows.

This approach does not deny the role of individuals or the ideas they propagate. What it does do is insist that the individual or idea can only play a certain role because of the preceding material development of society, of the way people make their livelihoods, and of the structure of classes and states. The skeleton is not the same as the living body. But without the skeleton the body would have no solidity and could not survive. Understanding the material ‘basis’ of history is an essential, but not sufficient, precondition for understanding everything else.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. iii-iv
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