Collecivism

[steve_bank]

Jumping over from the derail on a religion thread.


Collective ownership can work on a small scale.

The two major large scale Russian and Chinese experiments in Marxist collectivism/common ownership of means of production failed.

The Farm was successful.

Theer were a nuber of communes started in the 60s 70s.

Successful, long-running communes in the USA include Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, The Farm in Tennessee, and the EcoVillage at Ithaca in New York, all of which emphasize sustainability, community living, and shared resources to achieve longevity. These communities often share values like nonviolence, egalitarianism, and cooperation, creating sustainable lifestyles that have endured for decades.

The Farm (Tennessee) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Farm was established after Stephen Gaskin and friends led a caravan of 60 buses, vans, and trucks from San Francisco on a four-month speaking tour across the US. Along the way, they became a community, lacking only land to put down roots. After returning to California, the decision was made to buy land together. Combining all their resources would finance purchase of only about fifty acres in California. Another month on the road brought the group back to Tennessee, where they checked out various places that might be suitable to settle.[7] They decided on property in Lewis County, about seventy miles south of Nashville.[8] After buying 1,064 acres (4.1 km2) for $70 per acre, the group began building its community in the woods alongside the network of crude logging roads that followed its ridgelines. Shortly thereafter, an adjoining 750 acres (3.0 km2) were purchased for $100 per acre.

https://thefarmcommunity.com/

There are employee run businesses.

Israel was founded ion the kibbutz. In the 70s I attended a presentation by an Israeli looking for students to summer on a kibbutz. I forget what it produced. They had a swimming pool, a car pool if you needed to go somewhere, a dining hall, and private residences.

Kibbutz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

We were happy enough working on the land, but we knew more and more certainly that the ways of the old settlements were not for us. This was not the way we hoped to settle the country—this old way with Jews on top and Arabs working for them; anyway, we thought that there shouldn't be employers and employed at all. There must be a better way.[11]

 

[Politesse]

Russian and Chinese experiments in Marxist collectivism/common ownership of means of production failed.

China is one most powerful and wealthy nations on the planet, one of the few entities that the US and Europe answer to, and produces a vast proportion of the world's supply of agricultural goods, all produced on collectively owned farms. How does that constitute a "failure"?

 

[steve_bank]

Russian and Chinese experiments in Marxist collectivism/common ownership of means of production failed.

China is one most powerful and wealthy nations on the planet, one of the few entities that the US and Europe answer to, and produces a vast proportion of the world's supply of agricultural goods, all produced on collectively owned farms. How does that constitute a "failure"?

You can go online and trace the path form Mao to the Gang Of Four to Deng Xiaoping and the opening of China to the west. They were desperate and needed to industrialize. They could not feed the people.

When China opened American business saw dollar signs, a vast market to exploit selling American goods. They turned the table on us.

Granted the Chinese did a great job, It was European and and North American investment that built up modern China. We Americans transferred wholesale manufacturing technology to China in the interest of profit. Federal tax breaks were given to pay for the transfers.

Part of it was American union busting. The idea was we would transfer manufacturing and keep the intellectual business over here.

It turned out the Chinese played us expertly. They openly stole technology and intellectual property.

Chinese communism collapsed. I don't know the best term today, China adap0ted free market capitalism. They call themselves socialistic. Major business is controlled at the top by government as I understand it.

As to power Chin is over rated. From reeporting China has serious problems. A shrinking population and no immigration. They have over extended themselves in loans to foreign countries trying to buy support.

They keep threatening Taiwan but they will never invade. They arbitrarily redrew maritime boundaries declaring the South China Sea as Chinese, and we plus others make a point of ignorant it dispute their angry protests.

As much as I hate to admit it Trump is right, we have been too easy on China and they have been taking advantage.

China has been posturng and dragging its feet, but they are cumming around to negotiation with us.


Theft of intellectual property has long been a sore spot.

Manufacturing in China has been migrating to India and Vietnam. China's belligerence makes them unrelable for stable manufacturing.

 

[Politesse]

Russian and Chinese experiments in Marxist collectivism/common ownership of means of production failed.

China is one most powerful and wealthy nations on the planet, one of the few entities that the US and Europe answer to, and produces a vast proportion of the world's supply of agricultural goods, all produced on collectively owned farms. How does that constitute a "failure"?

You can go online and trace the path form Mao to the Gang Of Four to Deng Xiaoping and the opening of China to the west. They were desperate and needed to industrialize. They could not feed the people.

When China opened American business saw dollar signs, a vast market to exploit selling American goods. They turned the table on us.

Granted the Chinese did a great job, It was European and and North American investment that built up modern China. We Americans transferred wholesale manufacturing technology to China in the interest of profit. Federal tax breaks were given to pay for the transfers.

Part of it was American union busting. The idea was we would transfer manufacturing and keep the intellectual business over here.

It turned out the Chinese played us expertly. They openly stole technology and intellectual property.

Chinese communism collapsed. I don't know the best term today, China adap0ted free market capitalism. They call themselves socialistic. Major business is controlled at the top by government as I understand it.

As to power Chin is over rated. From reeporting China has serious problems. A shrinking population and no immigration. They have over extended themselves in loans to foreign countries trying to buy support.

They keep threatening Taiwan but they will never invade. They arbitrarily redrew maritime boundaries declaring the South China Sea as Chinese, and we plus others make a point of ignorant it dispute their angry protests.

As much as I hate to admit it Trump is right, we have been too easy on China and they have been taking advantage.

China has been posturng and dragging its feet, but they are cumming around to negotiation with us.


Theft of intellectual property has long been a sore spot.

Manufacturing in China has been migrating to India and Vietnam. China's belligerence makes them unrelable for stable manufacturing.

None of that changes the fact that collective ownership of the means of production does not seem to be hurting Chinese agribusiness. They are, in fact, outcompeting us by a margin on many specific products.

 

[steve_bank]

What!! China abandoned large scale collectivism and adapted a form of capitalism. If you by a house you get a mortgagee. China is in a real estate crisis. A crash.

China has a wealthy capitalistic upper class.

China does not allow free access to the country to reporters. But some have seen the huge factory cities where workers live in barracks and order is mainlined by the army.

Microsoft and others have been exposed in the past for electronics made by near slave labor. There is a reason why Chinese manufacturing is cheap. No labor and environmental protection laws as we have.

China is collectivist in that they do not have the the exaggerated sense of the individual and rights as we have. A different cultural history, deference to authority. The group over the individual.

When I say collectivist it is n the economic communist sense not social sense.

China divested from large scale industry controlled by the state, it was inefficient. Europe did the same in the Thatcher era.

One of the first things China did was allow famers to grow crops in excess of the srtate quota and sell at a profit. Agrcultural prduction went up.

The porfit incentive.

If you were an international Chinese athlete the state kept your earnings. You are the state so the state gets your earnings. Athletes were not allowed to hire foreign trainers. At some point they softened the policy and allowed athletes to keep part of the money.

Point is there are consequences to communist collectivism. Common ownership, you are the state and the state is you.

I doubt die hard Marxists grasp the full meaning.

In contrast the USA was founded as a meritocracy in that you keep what you earn. A monarchy does not arbitrarily get the profits of your ineffectual and physical labor and invocation.

As I said China is not collectivist in the communist sense. They ave adapted free market economics.

As to cultural collectivist China is an authoritarian state. The state, the CCP, controls media and imposes a rigid political and cultural conformity. There is personal privacy.

You only have to look at what China did to Hog Kong.

 

[bilby]

Europe did the same in the Thatcher era.

...and now the UK makes almost nothing.

State owned companies may have been inefficient, but at least they existed. They employed workers, and manufactured and extracted strategically important materials and minerals.

Thatcher sold my shares as a citizen in British Gas, British Steel, British Transport Hotels, British Rail Engineering Limited, British Aerospace, British Telecom, etc., etc., without my permission, and without paying me, then offered generously to let me buy some of them (like a guy who steals your TV and then offers to sell you a TV).

Almost all of these companies were sufficiently profitable that shares were highly sought after, oversubscribed at the price, and immediately sold for far more than their issue price. So the guy who stole your telly, offered to sell it back to you, and when you refused, sold it for £10 to someone else, and then boasted that that buyer was then able to sell it on for £100, now expects praise for their economic genius.

The UK economy still hasn't recovered from Thatcherism, and probably never will.

 

[Politesse]

What!! China abandoned large scale collectivism and adapted a form of capitalism. If you by a house you get a mortgagee. China is in a real estate crisis. A crash.

China has a wealthy capitalistic upper class.

China does not allow free access to the country to reporters. But some have seen the huge factory cities where workers live in barracks and order is mainlined by the army.

Microsoft and others have been exposed in the past for electronics made by near slave labor. There is a reason why Chinese manufacturing is cheap. No labor and environmental protection laws as we have.

China is collectivist in that they do not have the the exaggerated sense of the individual and rights as we have. A different cultural history, deference to authority. The group over the individual.

When I say collectivist it is n the economic communist sense not social sense.

China divested from large scale industry controlled by the state, it was inefficient. Europe did the same in the Thatcher era.

One of the first things China did was allow famers to grow crops in excess of the srtate quota and sell at a profit. Agrcultural prduction went up.

The porfit incentive.

If you were an international Chinese athlete the state kept your earnings. You are the state so the state gets your earnings. Athletes were not allowed to hire foreign trainers. At some point they softened the policy and allowed athletes to keep part of the money.

Point is there are consequences to communist collectivism. Common ownership, you are the state and the state is you.

I doubt die hard Marxists grasp the full meaning.

In contrast the USA was founded as a meritocracy in that you keep what you earn. A monarchy does not arbitrarily get the profits of your ineffectual and physical labor and invocation.

As I said China is not collectivist in the communist sense. They ave adapted free market economics.

As to cultural collectivist China is an authoritarian state. The state, the CCP, controls media and imposes a rigid political and cultural conformity. There is personal privacy.

You only have to look at what China did to Hog Kong.

I see you don't actually know much about the situation. No, farms are collectively owned properties in China. Either owned and managed directly by the state, or by rural collective agricultural organizations (commonly composed of a traditional village council) subject to national review. Farmers have usage rights, defined by contract, but no ownership rights. The farmer's use contracts can be leased or traded, but not directly for money. For the most part, the general policy is for the government to stay out of local afffairs as much as possible, trusting in the native wisdom of the farmers and farming communities themselves to deal with problems unless they become regional issues. Indeed, a law was passed last year to give the farmer's considerably more say in the collective committees; essentially, obliging the committees to take farmer petitions seriously and in a timely fashion. You are right that China has a growing middle and upper class, but that should raise doubts about your black-and-white, oversimplified worldview in which only two economic systems seemingly exist? The real situation with China is more complicated than a 60s schoolchild's understanding of a winner-take-all war of communism versus capitalism. Capitalist ideas and practices have indeed been allowed into China, but they are heavily mediated and scrutinised by a very heavy-handed coalition of local collective organizations and intemittently active but staggeringly powerful state agencies. Neither is the American system as straightfowardly capitalist as you seem to think. Both nations exist in a grey maybe between dueling economic philosophies, and both have tried quite a few different versions of this balance over the past many decades.

You can read about the system in more detail here.

 

[steve_bank]

A bit off topic

The general basis for the long running trade issues with China.

1 Theft of intellectual property and technology. They do it openly and acknowledge it.

2 Unfair labor practices. Working conditions in large scale factories we would consider violation of rights. Cheap labor with arbitrary low condensation..

3 Historically China does not allow its currency to float relative to other currencies. In international trade currency is a commodity the relative value of which varies in accordance with supply and demand. China has arbitrarily set its currency to favor China,

When you go to Canada your dollar may buy more or less than at home depending on the exchange rate. Same with international trade.

China wants to replace the US dollar with its currency as the international reserve currency. If that were to happen they could influence international trade directly in their favor.

A reserve currency is held by central banks to facilitate international transactions and minimize exchange rate risk. The U.S. dollar became the world's primary reserve currency after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement.

There is a lot at stake for the future of global trade with what China is doing. Part of it is China declaring the South Chiba sea Chinese. It is a major trade route.

South China Sea cargo routes are vital arteries for global trade, connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans via the Strait of Malacca. Key routes include the northern route via the Taiwan Strait, the central route passing Taiwan's east coast, and the southern connection to the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Malacca. These routes are crucial for transporting goods, particularly oil and container shipments, between Asia, Europe, and North America

China’s industrialist capacity is not collectivized. It is for profit. Post Mao China divested the state run collectivized industrial sector.

China's industrial system is best described as state capitalism or a socialist market economy, not purely capitalist. While it uses market-based mechanisms and features a large private sector, the state and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintain significant control and influence over the economy.

There is no single class of powerful, autonomous "oligarchs" in China comparable to those in post-Soviet Russia. Instead, China has wealthy business elites whose power is carefully controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

If you think China is some kind of idealistic communist collectivism you would be wrong. It is an authoritarian system with rigid control. No free speech and free press.

Like Trump would like.


In the 90s China was shooting people for corruption. Generals and officials living lavishly.

 

[Politesse]

1 Theft of intellectual property and technology. They do it openly and acknowledge it.

True, but then who doesn't? I know of no nation that explicitly protects the intellectual property rights of non-allied nations just on principle, without some treaty or mediated agreement obliging them to do so. Your criticisms of China are all justifiable, but very one-sided. Part of the reason Trump has struggled to implement this campaign promise is that his negotiators are willing to hold Chinese feet to the fire on IP, but not to concede anything on their own end. The thin protection of the TRIPS agreement supposedly does oversee US/China relations, but in a way that seldom results in sucessful legal action from either party.

2 Unfair labor practices. Working conditions in large scale factories we would consider violation of rights. Cheap labor with arbitrary low condensation

Again true, but hypocritical given where all those practices originated to begin with, and where most of the market and investors are who incentivize this system, directly engaging in it at times.

3 Historically China does not allow its currency to float relative to other currencies. In international trade currency is a commodity the relative value of which varies in accordance with supply and demand. China has arbitrarily set its currency to favor China,

True, but why shouldn't they? Currencies trading is a complex plane of capitalistic grift antithetical to core Chinese governmental values, and engaging in it would only hurt their economy. If you really want to trade in yuan there are ways of accomplishing this, though, as one would expect.

None of the above have anything obviously to do with collective ownership of the means of production, I note.

 

[lpetrich]

"Collectivism" in "Communist" countries is ownership by some self-proclaimed representatives of the working class. That's not much different from representative democracy in theory, it must be noted, and some left-wingers call Communism in practice a form of capitalism where the State is the sole capitalist. I remember a book about the Soviet Union which stated that it could be called USSR Inc.

Collectivism is common in capitalism, like business partnerships, multiple owners of corporate stock, and worker-owned cooperatives.

Also, armed forces are shamelessly collectivist.

 

[Politesse]

That's not much different from representative democracy in theory, it must be noted, and some left-wingers call Communism in practice a form of capitalism where the State is the sole capitalist

A major reason why the People's Republic ended up as such an "impure" communist state, if you ask me, is that running a country as vast, populated, and complex as China, as though it were a single corporation, exceeded the technological and practical bounds of a single bureaucratic complex. The government likes to portray its voluntary divestment of quotidian powers to councils, companies, and investors as pure, revolutionary-spirit largesse, but it is not much of a sacrifice to give up what one was at best struggling to maintain control of! In a way, micro-managing less has freed them to coordinate much more forceful and effective responses when the national government does choose to act, usually to the great detriment of any naysayers foolish or brave enough to attract State attention. The modern Party is habitually hands-off, but when roused can make a region just... disappear. A noticeably different manifestation of the trade-off between the state, the locally communal, and the individual than what they had before, even thirty years ago.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Russian and Chinese experiments in Marxist collectivism/common ownership of means of production failed.

China is one most powerful and wealthy nations on the planet, one of the few entities that the US and Europe answer to, and produces a vast proportion of the world's supply of agricultural goods, all produced on collectively owned farms. How does that constitute a "failure"?

What are you smoking?

Collectively owned farms were an epic disaster that killed something on the order of 10% of the population. Modern China is capitalist although they retain the "Communist" label. They switched to a semi-private system in the late 70s, the effect was big enough that I could see the difference--those born before then were basically always short enough that I could see over the heads of crowds. Those born after the change I can't see over the heads anymore.

 

[Politesse]

Russian and Chinese experiments in Marxist collectivism/common ownership of means of production failed.

China is one most powerful and wealthy nations on the planet, one of the few entities that the US and Europe answer to, and produces a vast proportion of the world's supply of agricultural goods, all produced on collectively owned farms. How does that constitute a "failure"?

What are you smoking?

Collectively owned farms were an epic disaster that killed something on the order of 10% of the population. Modern China is capitalist although they retain the "Communist" label. They switched to a semi-private system in the late 70s, the effect was big enough that I could see the difference--those born before then were basically always short enough that I could see over the heads of crowds. Those born after the change I can't see over the heads anymore.

I cited my source. What is yours?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Chinese communism collapsed. I don't know the best term today, China adap0ted free market capitalism. They call themselves socialistic. Major business is controlled at the top by government as I understand it.

Yup, big business does what Beijing tells them to even though they are nominally free.

As to power Chin is over rated. From reeporting China has serious problems. A shrinking population and no immigration. They have over extended themselves in loans to foreign countries trying to buy support.

Many of those foreign loans were never meant to be repaid--they would loan to build X, then seize X when the locals didn't pay.

But they are seriously overextended in production capacity. They insisted on maintaining the growth rate of a society catching up and didn't slow down when they caught up--and Beijing made them keep up the growth when there wasn't demand. Look up "ghost cities".

Manufacturing in China has been migrating to India and Vietnam. China's belligerence makes them unrelable for stable manufacturing.

The manufacturing has been moving anyway--same pattern we've seen before. The manufacturing goes to the cheapest place that's stable enough and can provide an adequate work force. In time that raises the economy of that place and they go looking for more cheap places. It's overall very beneficial for a country to be "used" this way, the first round of such countries is basically at a first world level by now. People complain of the "exploitation" of the workers but by local standards it's good.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I see you don't actually know much about the situation. No, farms are collectively owned properties in China. Either owned and managed directly by the state, or by rural collective agricultural organizations (commonly composed of a traditional village council) subject to national review. Farmers have usage rights, defined by contract, but no ownership rights. The farmer's use contracts can be leased or traded, but not directly for money.

It doesn't really matter who owns the land. What matters is whether the farmers profit from their own actions or only the collective actions of the group--and the latter proved a disaster.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1 Theft of intellectual property and technology. They do it openly and acknowledge it.

True, but then who doesn't? I know of no nation that explicitly protects the intellectual property rights of non-allied nations just on principle, without some treaty or mediated agreement obliging them to do so. Your criticisms of China are all justifiable, but very one-sided. Part of the reason Trump has struggled to implement this campaign promise is that his negotiators are willing to hold Chinese feet to the fire on IP, but not to concede anything on their own end. The thin protection of the TRIPS agreement supposedly does oversee US/China relations, but in a way that seldom results in sucessful legal action from either party.

There is an agreement obliging them to do so: WTO.

And what's your evidence about IP? The issue with China is that The Felon has fallen for the reich wing propaganda about the balance of trade, never mind that in the real world that fails to capture a lot of what's going on.

2 Unfair labor practices. Working conditions in large scale factories we would consider violation of rights. Cheap labor with arbitrary low condensation

Again true, but hypocritical given where all those practices originated to begin with, and where most of the market and investors are who incentivize this system, directly engaging in it at times.

Simple test: Every such country, jobs with the foreign factories are sought after. Nobody's forcing people to work for the factories, they choose to. Yes, there often is some pretty strict control on their movement when they're manufacturing high value items, doesn't prove malice. Wasn't that long ago when something like an iPhone would be a year's wages for such workers.

3 Historically China does not allow its currency to float relative to other currencies. In international trade currency is a commodity the relative value of which varies in accordance with supply and demand. China has arbitrarily set its currency to favor China,

True, but why shouldn't they? Currencies trading is a complex plane of capitalistic grift antithetical to core Chinese governmental values, and engaging in it would only hurt their economy. If you really want to trade in yuan there are ways of accomplishing this, though, as one would expect.

None of the above have anything obviously to do with collective ownership of the means of production, I note.

You have a very misguided notion of what their government values. I know two members of the "Communist" Party--both of whom are avid investors.

In the real world there are hard currencies--countries that let their currency float at market rate and soft currencies where the government dictates an exchange rate that does not correspond to reality. Such dictated rates are always above market rate and act as a tax on imports and a subsidy for exports. Hard currency is always valued above soft currency.

 

[bilby]

Every such country, jobs with the foreign factories are sought after. Nobody's forcing people to work for the factories, they choose to. Yes, there often is some pretty strict control on their movement when they're manufacturing high value items, doesn't prove malice. Wasn't that long ago when something like an iPhone would be a year's wages for such workers.

In 1895, the London and North Western Railway, at that time the largest corporation in the world, (and the largest in history too), had two men employed full time at their Crewe Works in the manufacturing of artificial legs for shunters who had lost a leg in the course of their work.

Nobody was being forced to work as a shunter for the LNWR; Such jobs were highly sought after. Though of course, there were no other employers of any significance in Crewe.

Whether it is accurate to say that those shunters chose to risk life and limb for a couple of shillings per day, is highly debatable. Certainly the attitude of the LNWR managers at the time was that they did, and that they should be grateful for the opportunity, and thankful for the benevolence of the company that provided them with wooden legs after their carelessness and inattention had cost them one of their original ones.

The logic is simple and compelling; If most shunters don't get injured, injuries to shunters must be their own fault, and can hardly be blamed on the company. Simple, compelling, evil, and wrong.

But we can rest assured that if jobs assembling iPhones are sought after by poor Chinese people, that imples (via simple and compelling logic) that Apple are a benevolent and almost charitable employer to whom they and their community should be duly grateful.