Marxism

[bilby]

Of course, the point is that very few places have tried pure capitalism, and only a handful have tried pure communism, and without exception, those places have been horrible shitholes.

Somewhere on the spectrum from infrastructure and primary resource extraction, through services and manufacturing, to wholesaling and retailing, a line can be drawn - not a straight line, and probably not a sharp line, either - with state ownership as the best option for some purposes, and private companies as the best option for others.

Not everything can be done by the government; Equally, not everything can be done for private profit-making businesses.

Not everything that IS done by the government need be incapable of making a profit for shareholders; The French government has a large, but often not a majority, shareholding in many companies, and the dividends from those companies benefit all French citizens, both by funding government services, and by reducing taxes; While also benefitting private shareholders.

The enemy isn't communism or capitalism; It's simpletonism. The best way to manage industry depends on the industry, and on myriad factors that influence that industry and the nation(s) in which it operates.

 

[Bomb#20]

"Communism" means seizing the means of production and abolishing private ownership of it. Name one country in the west that has done that besides Cuba.

British Steel (1967-1988)
National Coal Board (1946-1987)
British Gas Boards (1946-1972); British Gas Corporation (1972-1986)

Apparently, I grew up in a communist country. There were a lot more nationalised industrial concerns than these three, but arguably not concerned with 'production' so much as 'services' (eg healthcare) or 'infrastructure' (eg railways).

I already talked about the UK. If you want to call paying market value to the previous owners of the nationalized industries "seizing", suit yourself, but that sure as heck isn't what Marx meant by "seizing". That aside, why do you feel the 20% of the economy that was nationalized is a more important consideration in determining whether private ownership of the means of production has been abolished than the 80% that wasn't? Are you applying the Elizabeth-Warren-is-a-Cherokee principle?

 

[Bomb#20]

3. Everyone is communist, in their own family. Every family works on the communist principle. We've all seen it work. Society and the early tribes is just an expanded family unit. Assuming that early humans had property rights is silly. We know that the early city states functioned like communist communities. Everyone would farm communaly, going to comunal grain stores, and the priests would divvy it up according to need. Those systems only broke down as empires grew.

How do you know the early city states functioned like communist communities? Which early city states do you have in mind, and what's your evidence for how they functioned? As far as I know the earliest well-documented city-state was Ur. Here are excerpts from its law code:

If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.
If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.
If a man proceeded by force, and deflowered the virgin female slave of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver. (5)
If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay (her) one mina of silver. (6)
If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay (her) half a mina of silver. (7)
If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver. (8)
If a man is accused of sorcery [translation disputed], he must undergo ordeal by water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels. (10)[11]
If a man accused the wife of a man of adultery, and the river ordeal proved her innocent, then the man who had accused her must pay one-third of a mina of silver. (11)
If a prospective son-in-law enters the house of his prospective father-in-law, but his father-in-law later gives his daughter to another man, the father-in-law shall return to the rejected son-in-law twofold the amount of bridal presents he had brought. (12)
If a slave escapes from the city limits, and someone returns him, the owner shall pay two shekels to the one who returned him. (14)
If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver. (15)
If a man has cut off another man's foot, he is to pay ten shekels. (16)
If a man, in the course of a scuffle, smashed the limb of another man with a club, he shall pay one mina of silver. (17)
If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife, he must pay two-thirds of a mina of silver. (18)
If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver. (19)
If a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels of silver. (25)
If a man appears as a witness, but withdraws his oath, he must make payment, to the extent of the value in litigation of the case. (26)
If a man stealthily cultivates the field of another man and he raises a complaint, this is however to be rejected, and this man will lose his expenses. (27)
If a man flooded the field of a man with water, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field. (28)
If a man had let an arable field to a(nother) man for cultivation, but he did not cultivate it, turning it into wasteland, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field. (29)

Code of Ur-Nammu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bomb#20]

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work" - Peter F. Drucker

Good management is invisible in the organisation day to day. Its when management dissapears we notice what they do all day. And suddenly everything gets complicated

I've worked in management most of my working life

They are invisible so long as people are doing their job properly. I work for one of the good ones, he basically tries to automate his job other than innovating, I translate that into code that actually does it.

In any cooperative activity, it's human nature for people to overestimate their own importance and the collective importance of people similar to themselves, to underestimate the importance of participants doing something very different from their own contribution, and to especially underestimate the importance of people whose contributions they don't understand. Individual contributors underestimate managers and owners; managers underestimate leaf-level workers and owners; owners underestimate employees in general. Production is a synergistic process that depends on all participants doing their part, but as a species we're prone to tunnel vision.

 

[bilby]

If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife, he must pay two-thirds of a mina of silver. (18)

I bet there was a spate of nose-severing, the first time someone got hold of a bronze or iron knife

 

[Bomb#20]

Wait for the capitalists to build the factories, then seize them. There would be no need of that if the system wasn't based on theft.

Capitalists don't build factories. Factories are built by proletariats and then operated by proletariats.

And by the same token, people who hire hitmen aren't murderers.

 

[Bomb#20]

In today's western world of extreme abundance everyone, (everyone not retarded) could be rich if they put their minds to it.

Could they? Who would clean the toilets?

Or do you have some magical way to get $100 an hour for toilet cleaning?

So then don't. Get a job doing something more profitable, and scaleable, and leave the toilet cleaning to those who doesn't have that motivation.

But what if everyone (everyone not retarded) took your advice, and got motivated?

Could we still all be rich?
...
And if so, who is cleaning the toilets?

Market economics says that we'll all be cleaning our own toilets

Stuff and nonsense. Market economics says there's a clearing price for cleaning toilets and somebody has a comparative advantage at it. Market economics says if people are all so rich that nobody will clean toilets for less than $100/hour then some people will be so rich (and so gross-out-phobic) that they'd rather pay $100/hour than clean their own toilets, so running a $100/hour toilet cleaning service will be a viable business model and some rich people will stay rich by adopting that model. That's the magic of the market.

 

[lostone]

I suppose one could reasonably argue that the roots of both socialism and communism go as far back as the time of the Graachi brothers in ancient Rome. And also note that the reforms that they advocated, and the response to those reforms, led to the end of the Roman Republic and the absolute rule of the Roman emperors.

Gracchi brothers - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[steve_bank]

Karl Marx's ultimate vision for communism was a stateless, classless, and moneyless society where the coercive political "state" apparatus had "withered away". He did not provide a detailed blueprint but described a society based on common ownership and administration of resources for the public good.

Is that possible given us humans? Especially given the modern complexity and population scale.

Ne was a dreamer an d a theorist who happened to leave out the all important details of how it would work.

There are still working communes in the USA and there are the Israeli kibbutz. Small scale implementations of common ownership.

Can a system the size of the USA function without a coercive system? China and India?

 

[DrZoidberg]

In today's western world of extreme abundance everyone, (everyone not retarded) could be rich if they put their minds to it.

Could they? Who would clean the toilets?

Or do you have some magical way to get $100 an hour for toilet cleaning?

So then don't. Get a job doing something more profitable, and scaleable, and leave the toilet cleaning to those who doesn't have that motivation.

But what if everyone (everyone not retarded) took your advice, and got motivated?

Could we still all be rich?
...
And if so, who is cleaning the toilets?

Market economics says that we'll all be cleaning our own toilets

Stuff and nonsense. Market economics says there's a clearing price for cleaning toilets and somebody has a comparative advantage at it. Market economics says if people are all so rich that nobody will clean toilets for less than $100/hour then some people will be so rich (and so gross-out-phobic) that they'd rather pay $100/hour than clean their own toilets, so running a $100/hour toilet cleaning service will be a viable business model and some rich people will stay rich by adopting that model. That's the magic of the market.

I was answering a hypothetical example if everyone maximised getting rich. Ie everyone is homo economicus.

You are, of course, correct in the real world. But not in this hypoethetical scenario.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The moment we got state financed universal welfare and medical care based on need I think we became communist.

That alleged ideological connection is what is keeping us fro having national health care.

In our conservative thinking national healthcare --> communism --> dictatorship IOW Russian and Chinese communism.

In our general western forms of what call socialist and capitalist systems 'the government' does not fund anything. It is funded by taxes on personal earnings and business.

Remember the Beatles' song Taxman? About British taxation, when you die be sure to declare the pennies on your eyes

And back to what is the definition of communism. Common ownership of the means of production. And what does that en in parcel?

The state today all over the west is perfectly comfortable regulating companies down to the smallest detail. That's a massive ideological shift. We don't see CEO's as sovereign entities anymore. We increasingly see them as public servants. We see them as owned by the state. That's why bail outs of failing companies is a thing. That would be inconceivable in the liberal paradigm. It was the Great Depression that started this socialist shift, and now we're heading down the slippery slope at full speed.

What has shifted is our attitude to companies. What we're ok with the govornment regulating and controlling. In the west, I think USA has the greatest resistance to it. But the govornment still keeps getting involved where it doesn't need to.

In China the state owns all land at the top level.

Sure. But that's a technicality. In every country the land is owned by whoever has the biggest guns. They in turn can chose to let whoever use it. What sets countries apart is how and how much the govornment gets involved into the details. China is absurdly corrupt. Corruption is always a completely unregulated free market and will always be. So which market is more free, China or the West?

By conventional measures, China has 391,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), but new analysis of state ownership among all 40 million registered firms in China finds that 363,000 firms are 100% state-owned, 629,000 firms are 30% state-owned, and nearly 867,000 firms have at least some state ownership.

The Chinese constitution describes the country's system of government as a people's democratic dictatorship. The CCP has also used other terms to officially describe China's system of government including "socialist consultative democracy", and whole-process people's democracy.

The Chinese political system is considered authoritarian. There are no freely elected national leaders, political opposition is suppressed, all organized religious activity is controlled by the CCP, dissent is not permitted, and civil rights are curtailed.

A true Marxist state is a fantasy. Without hierarchical structure nothing works. China makes it's version work with rigid control and a quasi private sector.

From what I read and fro someone who lived in China the CCP is always fearful of a counter revolution.

I dislike the term "True Marxist state". Because it's usually some rule upheld to an extreme to make a political point. With the same logic you could say that there's no true liberal democracy, because they've all got features that don't make them completely fair.

When I say Marxist, socialist or communist what I have in mind are the role of the govornment. Here's the way I see it:

Monarchy: The king is the nation. The cops work for the king. In a conflict whoever has the highest rank wins. Companies exist at the pleasure of the king and serves the kings needs. The king is a paternal figure disciplining and guiding his people to a correct behaviour.

Liberalism: The people are the nation. The cops work for laws. Laws are created through negotiation by self interested parties. Companies exist to serve it's share holders and has to fight for survival. Universities don't guide us. They give us facts with which we work out for ourselves how to negotiate life.

Socialism: The people are the nation. The cops for the laws. Laws are created by a benevolent and caring paternal govornment representing the people. Companies exist to serve the nation. Universities don't guide us. They give us facts with which we work out for ourselves how to negotiate life.

I think what sets USA apart from Europe is that USA became democratic when liberalism was in vogue. While Europe became democratic when socialism was in vogue. Liberalism was the engine that brought democracy to USA. Socialism was the engine that brought democracy to Europe.

To me, what I've noticed is the the biggest difference between liberal and socialist thinking is that socialists seem to be comfortable with the govornment nudging the people through laws and propaganda to a more virtuous behaviour. Stuff like govornment financed ad campaigns intended to inform us on how to be more environmentally friendly. To a liberal that's an overstep. That's not the role of the govornment. But a socialist is ok with it. Because it's a part of the deal.

I think the entire west has inexorably been sliding towards socialism the entire 20th century. Whether we call it Marxism, socialism or communism is beside the point IMHO. It's the values and the motivation behind political actions that matter.

 

[Bomb#20]

But what if everyone (everyone not retarded) took your advice, and got motivated?

Could we still all be rich?
...
And if so, who is cleaning the toilets?

Market economics says that we'll all be cleaning our own toilets

Stuff and nonsense. Market economics says there's a clearing price for cleaning toilets and somebody has a comparative advantage at it. Market economics says if people are all so rich that nobody will clean toilets for less than $100/hour then some people will be so rich (and so gross-out-phobic) that they'd rather pay $100/hour than clean their own toilets, so running a $100/hour toilet cleaning service will be a viable business model and some rich people will stay rich by adopting that model. That's the magic of the market.

I was answering a hypothetical example if everyone maximised getting rich. Ie everyone is homo economicus.

You are, of course, correct in the real world. But not in this hypoethetical scenario.

My Econ 101 prof explained the principle of comparative advantage to us thusly: Once upon a time there was a lawyer who paid his secretary $40/hour to type up his legal briefs for him. Then he said to himself, why am I paying for somebody who can type 80 words a minute, when I can type 120 words a minute? So he started typing his own briefs. After an hour of typing he'd saved himself $60 in secretary wages and cost himself a $150 billable hour he could have spent with a client. (Yes, I'm that old!) The prof's point being, the secretary can have an absolute disadvantage at typing -- she types a lot slower than him -- but still have a comparative advantage over him at typing.

If everyone maximized getting rich, anybody whose time is worth more than the money she could save by cleaning her own toilet will have a homo economicus incentive to pay somebody else to clean her toilet for her, even if it takes $100 to get a guy to agree to do an hour of toilet cleaning because there are more pleasant ways he could get rich at $90 an hour.