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I myself have recently become somewhat more sympathetic towards Marxist ideas. Marx predicted and wanted the end of Capitalism, and he wanted a Socialist society.I used to be a pretty staunch Marxist socialist, but I've been sort of drifting away from that viewpoint. My views on economics and politics are still evolving. http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 3&start=20
The definition you are using most likely applies to state capitalism, which is incompatible with free market economics. It includes corporations and cronyism and corporatism and brings with it large wealth disparities. Both the state and the corporation benefit from each other.DogsOnAcid wrote:The first question you have to ask, is who exactly are you trying to benefit with a given system?
Capitalism is a system that works on the private accumulation of capital from the labour of workers and the private ownership of the means of production (factories, land, machinery, any apparatus that enables the capitalist to exploit the worker).
You appear to be describing Communism. However, I don't know if you advocate a stateless society or not.DogsOnAcid wrote:Socialism on the other hand, is the system that will replace capitalism and liberate the working class. For Socialism to be built, a violent revolution has to take place, because the workers have to take control of the MoP (Means of Production), and the Capitalist class, as history has shown, will not surrender their wealth without a fight.
Your answer here betrays the fact that socialism is unsustainable. You see state capitalism as a means to an end, just as you see bloody revolution, wealth redistribution via state theft, and the individual as means to an end.DogsOnAcid wrote:The reason why Socialism requires the development of Capitalism, is because it needs Capitalist development of the MoP for society to reach a technological level wherein all basic needs can be met. The Soviet Union, for example, was an underdeveloped country, that was just breaking ties with Feudalism. This made the development of Socialism a very difficult task, because the Revolution didn't spread to developed economies like Germany.
Socialism is the creation science of economics.DogsOnAcid wrote:Marxist Socialism is Scientific, in that it analyses history and society from a Scientific and Materialist point of view.
Hmmm... you could be leaning towards libertarian socialism. You might find this to your liking.Furrowed Brow wrote:I'm not actually sure yet that I am a fall blown socialist. So I guess that does not make me a socialist. For all the reasons I have given in the other thread that is presently running I clearly feel capitalism is deeply flawed as a system and needs to fall over and die. And the little bit of Marxist thought I do know is useful and accurate for describing what is wrong with capitalism. However I have a libertarian streak, and the spectre of police states hangs over me. So I do not want to pass power from a capitalist elite to a politburo.
I like the idea of cooperatives but guess I have yet to resolve the distinction of use and profit you mention.
In an ideal world we would have achieved a level of technology under which each individual has full control of their own energy needs, their food, their shelter and their wants and needs. Under such conditions no one has power over anyone else, and there is no need to seek such power because all individual needs are met. At which time folk will be empowered to associate with those they wish to associate and tell those they don't wish to be with to shuv off, and no one is in a position to lord it over others.
True we do not live in an ideal world, but the same principle that motivate that picture of an ideal world motivate how I would like to world to move today. A system that allows freedom of movement, along with freedom of critical thought and expression, and one in which every individual is equally empowered and not left vulnerable to other peoples whims. Maybe I am describing socialism and don't know it, maybe I am describing something else. Maybe I just don't like authoritative structures and I am more a vandal than a socialist. I need to think about this more.
Tell me, where has this 'free market economy' have ever been implimented? What actual evidence do you have that it would work, and not degenerate ? Please give real world experences and show that it would work.Darias wrote:The definition you are using most likely applies to state capitalism, which is incompatible with free market economics. It includes corporations and cronyism and corporatism and brings with it large wealth disparities. Both the state and the corporation benefit from each other.DogsOnAcid wrote:The first question you have to ask, is who exactly are you trying to benefit with a given system?
Capitalism is a system that works on the private accumulation of capital from the labour of workers and the private ownership of the means of production (factories, land, machinery, any apparatus that enables the capitalist to exploit the worker).
But the concept of wage slavery is flawed. As humans we are slaves to nature, in that we have to eat. You are confusing the need to eat with being enslaved to your boss. In a free market, absent of long-lived monopolies and any corporations, you are free to create your own products, work for an employer that pays the most for your labor, or become your own boss. All of these are voluntary choices; the key word being voluntary. Slavery is not voluntary.
I never spoke of State Capitalism.The definition you are using most likely applies to state capitalism, which is incompatible with free market economics. It includes corporations and cronyism and corporatism and brings with it large wealth disparities. Both the state and the corporation benefit from each other.
Err, Nature doesn't live off our labour, nor does it pay us any wages... That's a terrible analogy.But the concept of wage slavery is flawed. As humans we are slaves to nature, in that we have to eat. You are confusing the need to eat with being enslaved to your boss. In a free market, absent of long-lived monopolies and any corporations, you are free to create your own products, work for an employer that pays the most for your labor, or become your own boss. All of these are voluntary choices; the key word being voluntary. Slavery is not voluntary.
And how is this related to Socialism?You are not entitled to your employer's factory, property, or materials he paid for. You, as an assemblyman who puts some parts together, are not entitled to the full price of a computer, and neither is the guy who ships the computer. A boss who pays every single assemblyman and deliveryman the full price of the final product will end up in debt -- costing him double the price. That computer business would not exist and then no one would have computers. There is no incentive for such a business to exist because the owner won't have any money to pay his workers or feed his family. You could always choose to make your own PC, but good luck getting the parts.
Anarcho-communism is Idealist and Utopian Socialism. I've read Kropotkin and all that. He even said we have a "natural want to be free" in The Conquest of Bread. Without actually defining what freedom was, or providing biological or scientific proof for this "need",Social anarchism or anarcho-communism is something I respect for its willingness to embrace voluntary association over violence. However, I don't think those systems are sustainable, having no incentive for economic growth apart from subsistence. The only system that is moral, voluntary, and able to drive technological innovation and economic development is market anarchism.
All Communists advocate a Stateless society. The State is an organ of Class Domination. Under a classless society there is no need for the contemporary conception of "State".You appear to be describing Communism. However, I don't know if you advocate a stateless society or not.
I don't endorse violence at all. That's bordering Ad hominem if you are trying to support some argument. Violent revolution is not necessary because communists are bloodthirsty killers, but because History has shown us that no Class has ever given up it's power to another without resorting to violence to protect it. That is what makes the Revolution violent, the repression of the revolutionary masses through violence.It doesn't surprise me that you endorse violence. Most socialistic systems that have been implemented throughout history, including the state capitalist one we have today, have been inherently violent.
What Democratic Socialists, what State Capitalists? Please specify.Most non-revolutionary statist socialists, from democratic socialists of Europe to state capitalists of the United States, commonly consider their economic philosophy to be kind, gentle, humane and compassionate. The problem is, whatever label you wish to attach to these economic systems, they also employ violence in the form of state theft. Taxation, in the spirit of Orwellian doublespeak, becomes "charity." Yet, since taxation is mandatory upon pain of eventual kidnapping and imprisonment, it cannot be voluntary or charitable or moral. When a man holds a gun to your head on the street, giving him your wallet is a form of compulsory compliance; you can't call it charity -- even if it is for someone else's benefit.
Read more history. And stop the personal attacks, they don't suit you at all.But you are a bit more brazen in your advocacy of violence because in addition to coercion you also accept physically violent, vandalizing, murderous revolution as a means to an end.
Market anarchism? Like Peaceful Somalia? I hear it's nice this time of year.Most people, regardless of class, employ self defense when their things are being taken or when their safety is compromised. This is the only justifiable form of violence. The mob is not entitled to your success. The sick are not entitled to the organs of the healthy; beheading the rich and gutting healthy to save the sick and feed the masses --- well it usually leads to chaos and violence that ends up killing the working class you care about. Eventually you run out of other people's money. And you teach society that violence is better that negotiation and voluntary action. Your utopia is more savage than nature. Market anarchism is superior because it's peaceful, voluntary, and it doesn't necessitate violent revolution or the transformation of humane nature to function in the real world. If generations of people are taught to practice bloodshed, and are rewarded for predatory violent behavior -- how are they then transformed into benevolent selfless human beings once socialism is "achieved" ?
Unsustainable, says who?Your answer here betrays the fact that socialism is unsustainable. You see state capitalism as a means to an end, just as you see bloody revolution, wealth redistribution via state theft, and the individual as means to an end.
Communism is inherently Stateless. Read more.If socialism cannot function without the technological and economic progress resulting from markets with limited economic freedom, does your answer not suggest that innovation and progress end once socialism is implemented? State-Capitalism/Democratic Socialism is a bit more sustainable than State-Communism, but eventually those systems collapse because they are not sustainable in the long run. Rome fell, the Soviet Union eventually fell; Greece and the United States are not far behind.
Ditto.On another point. I really don't understand why you think State-Communism would have worked in the Soviet Union. The number of people who died in the name of Communism in the USSR, China and other nations is about the same as the total number of people killed during WWII; most of those lost would have fallen in the category you label "working class." Yours is not an economic philosophy that can function in the real world; it is a mechanism for culling the human race.
Ridiculous comparison. Your arguments lose weight by the paragraph.This glorification of violent Marxism is tantamount to praising Nazi fascism while ignoring the reality of the Holocaust -- which looks like an execution in comparison to the countless masses lost thanks to the ravings of economically illiterate ideologues.
Before I answer your question, I must address the way you framed it.Goat wrote:Tell me, where has this 'free market economy' have ever been implimented? What actual evidence do you have that it would work, and not degenerate ? Please give real world experences and show that it would work.
It sounds like a lot of the 'utopia' books that used to come out that we had to read in high school. Looks great on paper.. but no one gets it to actually work.
e="DogsOnAcid"]Your answer here betrays the fact that socialism is unsustainable. You see state capitalism as a means to an end, just as you see bloody revolution, wealth redistribution via state theft, and the individual as means to an end.
The implication is that a Socailist society is incapable of developing the means of productions at a high level, and can only use what was earlier built by capitalists. Do you really think that such a system is sustainable?The reason why Socialism requires the development of Capitalism, is because it needs Capitalist development of the MoP for society to reach a technological level wherein all basic needs can be met.
Thanks for your post, I generally agree with you. I think of Marx theory as a theory developed some 150 years ago. Socialism was thought to be a natural replacement of capitalism as a result of tensions between working classes. A modern system that adopted elements of both capitalism (private property and concentration of capital in hands of few) and socialism (welfare, unions, somewhat democratic elections) hasn't been considered as a stable alternative in those times.Furrowed Brow wrote: [Replying to post 68 by 100%atheist]
I'd say any economic system in which 51% of its business operations are non profit making cooperatives is leaning towards socialism. Capitalism with welfare whilst motivated by a sense of social justice is also a system that protects capitalism by mitigating against its worsts aspects and stopping folk getting uppity. Ultimately socialism is a system of thought that is anti capitalism. Capitalism with welfare is not anti capitalism. It is actually a means that helps the employer pay their worker less and keep more of the profits for themselves, and if the employer can get the tax burden shifted back on to the working class welfare actually manages to amplify inequality. If the system then leaves everyone thinking of welfare as a benefit given to the individual rather than a payment that gets the capitalist off the hook then capitalist ideology that keeps everyone under a false consciousness is complete.
Sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about. More specifically, I don't understand the terms "slave welfare" and "slave society".DogsOnAcid wrote:I have a Scientific view of History. Science is usually black and white.You have a pretty black and white Karl Marx era view of socialism and capitalism. My point is that capitalists of the past have learned from Marx' theory that if they don't re-build a classic capitalist system with classic work classes, they will have massive loses as Marx predicted. The system that is most widely accepted (well, perhaps "peacefully adopted" is a better word) in the US and most of EU is a middle ground between pure capitalism and pure socialism (the system you call social democracy). If you look at some European countries like Sweden, you will see that they are leaning to Socialism more and if you look at the US you will see that she leans to capitalism more.
Let's simplify things. If you have a slave society, with slave welfare (the Government gives slaves a place to stay, food and welfare if they haven't been bought yet), does that make the slave society half-way Socialism? No, not at all, it's still slave society.
I explained the slave welfare analogy quite clearly.Sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about. More specifically, I don't understand the terms "slave welfare" and "slave society".
The market system is far better at producing what people actually want to use than central planning.DogsOnAcid wrote:Better for whom?So I guess the question is whether capitalism with a conscience (i.e. welfare etc.) is better than socialism proper.
If production is geared toward use and not profit, and workers control the means of production, then it's socialism. But market socialism is kind of contradictory, because markets are geared towards profit, not use.Is there a better way to formulate capitalism? What if all businesses were workers trusts? Is this socialism or is it a fairer way to organise capital. I'm not sure.
But why would socialists ever want market-socialism anyway?
